>> THE OTHER ZAWAHIRI...

'Key capture' tightens net on bin Laden
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Reports received by Asia Times Online say that Dr Khalid al-Zawahiri, the son of Osama bin Laden's iconic deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been apprehended in Afghanistan in what could be a major breakthrough in efforts to track down bin Laden.
On Monday night, Asia Times Online was told by high-level sources that Khalid had been trapped by Pakistani forces somewhere in the South Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan. However, he was said to have slipped across the border into Afghanistan and disappeared. On Wednesday, though, fresh reports indicate that Khalid, along with his wife and three children, have in fact been arrested and are in United States custody.
Details of Khalid's past activities are sketchy, but his capture - if true - is viewed as highly significant as he is likely to have information about the precise whereabouts and activities of his father, and bin Laden too, as they are suspected of hiding in the mountainous region from which Khalid was flushed before he fled to Afghanistan. Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri is the key al-Qaeda intellectual and ideological strategist.
There has been no official confirmation of Khalid's arrest, although Pakistani military officials reported on Wednesday that Pakistani troops, supported by helicopter gunships, on Tuesday arrested at least 20 people, including some foreigners, as they combed a rugged tribal area on the border with Afghanistan in a hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives.
In an ironic twist, Ayman Zawahiri was in the news on Tuesday after a tape he is purported to have made accused US President George W Bush of lying when he asserted that most of the al-Qaeda network had been crushed. In a tape aired on Qatar's alJazeera satellite television network, Zawahiri said: "Bush's allegation that his troops have arrested more than two-thirds of al-Qaeda ... is full of lies. The leader of the most powerful country on earth is not embarrassed to say these deceptions and lies. It's gotten to the stage that he can ridicule his listeners to this degree."
The latest activity in the Pakistani tribal areas is a part of a major offensive by US-led forces on the Afghanistan side and Pakistani troops on their side of the border "smoke out" not only al-Qaeda remnants, but also elements of the Afghan resistance.
The United States is exerting heavy pressure on Islamabad to fully cooperate in this venture, as in the past elements within the Pakistan military and intelligence branches have been less than fully committed in assisting the US as they resent dancing to Washington's tune.
Soon after September 11, 2001, US authorities asked President General Pervez Musharraf simply whether he was "with us or against us", and Musharraf decided to go along with the US "war on terror". Now, apparently, he has been asked the same unconditional question in tracking bin Laden and co, and he has little option but to answer in the affirmative or face the consequences, such as sanctions or the loss of aid.
In January, the US approved US$395 million in aid to Pakistan, almost half of which will be used to write off debt to Washington. Under the agreement Pakistan will repay $200 million to the US, which would save it about $400 million-$500 million in interest payments over the period of the loan. Pakistan's foreign debt and liabilities total $35 billion, of which $33 billion is debt. Pakistan and the US have also agreed on a framework of how to utilize another $3 billion promised by the US over the next five years. The $3 billion package was announced by President George W Bush at Camp David in a meeting with Musharraf in June last year. According to the agreement, $600 million will be disbursed each year. Half of the amount will be for defense equipment purchases by Pakistan and the other half for economic development.
Afghan resistance lies low
The "hammer and anvil" operation now under way, with US-led forces on the one side in Afghanistan and Pakistani forces on the other side across the border, is making life difficult for the Afghan resistance as its supply lines are being squeezed. It's response has been to lie low until spring, when it plans a major offensive to capture key Afghan cities.
"At present, the resistance has no intention to fight the armies engaged in the present operation [US and Pakistani]. The resistance will respond at a venue of its own choice against US interests," a source close to the Taliban told this correspondent.
"Though, at present, there is a decision to be silent, soon, when coalition forces are fatigued with their search and seize operations, they will see a new crop of youths on suicide missions," according to other sources. The vanguard of these missions will include fresh young Afghan youths who have been "tamed and chosen for this task". They will rise up from the population and blow themselves up to hit US interests and force the foreign forces to leave Afghan soil," the source said.
The present Afghan operation follows the pattern of the US invasion of Afghanistan that started on October 7, 2001 in which a few Pakistani air bases were used for more than 55,000 sorties into Afghanistan. Presently, Kohat, Bannu and Jacobabad bases are being utilized, although there is no resistance from within Afghanistan at present.
Khalid al-Zawahiri, and even bigger fish, might be snared in this assault, but the Afghan resistance is biding its time.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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>> BUT THEN...

Afghanistan: Playing politics again
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Even as military operations continue on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan to flush out members of the Afghan resistance and remnants of al-Qaeda, initiatives continue apace to fill political vacuums that have the potential to derail any permanent Afghan peace process.
In the first phase of an extensive "hammer and anvil" military campaign, with US-led forces on the Afghan side of the border and Pakistani troops on the other side in the tribal areas of South Waziristan, Pakistani officials claim that they have arrested more than 20 foreigners. These include Saudis, Egyptians and Yemenis. However, officials refuse to comment on a February 26 Asia Times Online report that Dr Khalid al-Zawahiri, the son of Osama bin Laden's deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been apprehended ('Key capture' tightens net on bin Laden).
Pakistani troops have also managed to force many resistance fighters from their havens in Pakistan back into Afghanistan, and operations by US-led forces now continue in the Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika, Khost and the Kunar Valley.
On the political front, meanwhile, interim Afghan President Hamid Karzai revealed this week that he is considering a meeting with "moderate" former Taliban leader Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who was foreign minister in the regime of Mullah Omar that was run out of office in late 2001 in the face of a US invasion. Karzai said Muttawakil had written him a "nice letter" and that he was considering talks in an effort to reintegrate onetime Taliban supporters into government. Muttawakil was released from US custody several months ago and lives comfortably in a "restricted" house in Kandahar.
Also this week, an important meeting took place in Kandahar, headed by the governor, Yusuf Pashtun, at which the idea of a "greater Kandahar" was once again discussed. This envisages, as first proposed by Abdul Ahad Karzai, Hamid Karzai's father, that Kandahar act as the headquarters (capital) of all of the Pashtun belt provinces in the south and southeast of the country. The elder Karzai was chief of the Popalzai tribe, a former government minister and immensely respected among southern Pashtun tribes.
But the Taliban murdered him in 1999 in retaliation for his son trying to organize anti-Taliban opposition in 1998, where the younger Karzai had found some support among Pashtun tribal chiefs angry with the Taliban for their close ties with Arab radicals, such as al-Qaeda.
The overtures by Muttawakil (although certainly under "advice" from US authorities) and the sudden revival of the greater Kandahar concept are no accident. The moves are clearly designed as part of the process to find a counter-balance to the strong Northern Alliance (mostly non-Pashtun) influence in the north of the country, and more importantly, in the corridors of power in Kabul. The moves are also aimed to blunt the threat of the resurgent "non-moderate" Taliban in the country, in alliance with the Hebz-i-Islami Afghanistan of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar is bent on stirring grassroots Pashtun feelings against foreigners in the country, and on playing on feelings of deprivation among Pashtuns, who, despite being the major ethnic grouping, believe that they are politically marginalized.
Although Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, Northern Alliance members dominate his cabinet, and they have stationed about 20,000 of their armed supporters in Kabul, where they have been given permanent residences. Among the bureaucracy, Pashtu-speaking officials have been replaced by Dari-speaking Tajiks, and Dari has become the language of business, breaking many years of tradition.
Now the Karzai-appointed administration in Kandahar wants to address Pashtun resentment by proposing greater authority and influence for Pashtuns. Although this amounts to "opposition within government", the moves have the backing of the US, which is also concerned about the grip on power that the Northern Alliance has in Kabul.
In this context, ex-Taliban minister Muttawakil's involvement is important, as the United States has for a long time attempted to split the Taliban substantially - even before the US attacked Afghanistan in late 2001. Muttawakil was one of its earlier successes, as he surrendered soon after the invasion began. With his release at this juncture, US authorities believe (hope) that he will be able to rally more "moderate" Taliban to his cause, away from the cause of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Hekmatyar.
In the two years since the demise of the Taliban, Afghanistan remains nowhere closer to establishing a viable political system. Elections are scheduled for June, but already Karzai is talking of postponing them because of the poor security situation. Karzai's writ barely extends beyond the capital. Some districts are ruled by the Taliban, some by Hekmatyar's followers, some by opportunistic warlords, or a combination of these.
When US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Kabul and Kandahar on Thursday, most people connected the trip to the military situation on the border and the much-publicized hunt for bin Laden.
Simply defeating the resistance in battle is not enough, if even that can be achieved. As important is a strategy that will bring about a political solution to allow the US to exit the country. Roping in "moderate" Taliban and playing the Pashtun card are continued endeavors in this regard.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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>> REPLAY OF TORA BORA...

Bring me the head of Osama bin Laden
By Pepe Escobar
The war in eastern Afghanistan and the tribal areas in Pakistan is barely on, but the Pentagon's spinning machine is in high gear. Who will prevail: al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman "The Surgeon" al-Zawahiri, or Commando 121?
The Pentagon's creative directors ruled that Commando 121, or Task Force 121, of General William Boykin - a self-described Islamophobe and a known Christian fanatic - was responsible for the capture of Saddam Hussein, when in fact the former dictator was arrested by Kurdish peshmerga (paramilitary) forces acting on a tip by one of his cousins and then sold to the Americans, according to Asia Times Online sources in the Sunni triangle. This week, without a blip in many a strategic radar screen, Commando 121 transferred from Iraq to Pakistan. On October 25 of last year, Asia Times Online reported that Boykin had been appointed in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It's snowing on Rumsfeld's parade.
European intelligence sources tell Asia Times Online to expect the same scenario "Saddam" for the eventuality of the capture of bin Laden and Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Omar. Bin Laden will be "smoked out", probably on a tip by an Afghan tribal leader willing to make a cool US$25 million. And all credit will go to the secretive Commando 121, which is known to comprise navy Seals and commandos from the army's Delta Force.
The Pentagon has fired its first rhetorical Tomahawks of the season - via a leak this past weekend by a "US intelligence source" that bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar and about 50 top al-Qaeda operatives had been located in Pakistan's Balochistan province. Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf was said to be on the brink of authorizing an American intervention. According to the Pentagon script, the fugitives are "boxed in", packed in a tight group, surrounded by an array of US and British special forces, and apparently with no chance of escaping.
This sounds like a replay of Tora Bora in December 2001, when US-led forces were convinced that they had bin Laden trapped in the mountainous range of that name in Afghanistan, only to learn that he had moved on long before the worst of the massive US assault on the area. The difference this time is that the fugitives are now said to be in the "isolated" Toba Kakar mountains in Balochistan, northeast of the provincial capital Quetta, and very far from the Afghan province of Zabol, on the other side of the border.
The fugitives are supposed to be in an area between the villages of Khanozoi and Murgha Faqizai. There is a road between both villages - and not much else. The average altitude in these mountains is 3,000 meters. There is an obvious escape route: a tortuous mountain trail towards the Afghan border village of A'la Jezah. And there are the not-so-obvious routes, known only to bin Laden and a few Arab-Afghans familiar with the country since the early 1980s.
According to the Pentagon leak, the fugitives were found through "a combination of CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] paramilitaries and special forces, plus image analysis by geographers and soil experts". Predictably, local Balochistan authorities deny everything. But even if bin Laden and the whole al-Qaeda leadership are in fact encircled in this area - and not further north, between the provinces of Kunar in Afghanistan and Chitral in Pakistan, where they were supposed to be hiding - what's the point of telling the whole world about it?
CIA vs Pentagon
It's no less than a coincidence, then, that a new Ayman al-Zawahiri tape surfaced on Arab networks only one day after these Pentagon leaks claimed that they had al-Qaeda surrounded, with the Americans just waiting for some "authorization" to capture them. Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld will be in Afghanistan this week. Exasperated diplomats suggest to Asia Times Online that he may have personally negotiated the terms of the "authorization" with Musharraf. After all, these are the stakes that really matter for the Bush administration: when, where and how to spin the capture of bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
The CIA is already covering its back - just in case. CIA supremo George Tenet was on a secret mission to Islamabad in early February - arguably to discuss the modalities of spinning concerning bin Laden's whereabouts. Tenet will do anything to help George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as the president has firmly kept Tenet in his job, even after the "intelligence failure" before September 11 and the "intelligence failure" concerning the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. To further fireproof his cover this time, Tenet told the US Senate Intelligence Committee that al-Qaeda was capable of more September 11-style attacks inside American territory, citing evidence that al-Qaeda was planning to recruit airline pilots for such missions.
According to the CIA chief, bin Laden has "gone deep underground". He was not specific, and unlike the Pentagon, he did not point to the exact global positioning satellite coordinates of bin Laden and his crew of 50. Rumsfeld clearly knows something that Tenet does not.
Another key actor, Musharraf, is duly following his script - stationing "tens of thousands" of Pakistani army troops in the tribal areas and vigorously trying to "smoke out" the usual al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects. But sources tell Asia Times Online that very few Afghan-Arabs remain active in the Afghan resistance movement - only the ones who fought in the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviets, speak local Pashtun dialects and know each piece of rock in the Afghan and tribal area mountains. Musharraf's job is much easier now that the whole porous area has been declared off limits to the foreign press. Moreover, any Pakistani official source insists on strictly denying the presence of any American troops of any size, color or structure operating inside Pakistani territory.
But where are they?
Sources in Peshawar confirm to Asia Times Online that Pakistani and American forces are raising hell on both sides of the porous Pak-Afghan border, with Islamabad contributing with helicopter gunships, paramilitary forces and regular ground troops. This is the hors d'oeuvre for the already well-flagged upcoming spring offensive by the resistance. The American offensive at first will be concentrated in North and South Waziristan, on the Pakistani side, and the provinces of Paktia and Paktika on the Afghan side.
Pashtun tribals in the Afghan province of Khost confirm that after a bombing campaign, American forces and local Afghan allies brought with them the usual suitcases full of dollars and are now involved in house-to-house searches. This area used to be a stronghold of famous former Taliban minister and commander Jalaluddin Haqqani. The Americans will soon be forced to start a real war in Paktika - as the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul has admitted losing nine districts in the province, and running the risk of losing the rest. Some of the Paktika districts are now ruled by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan party, others by tribal leaders simply hostile to the American-backed Karzai regime. The Taliban also say that they now control several districts in Zabul province.
Islamabad is taking no prisoners. Now, Pashtun tribals cannot even indulge in their favorite pastime: to roll in their beloved Toyota Land Cruisers with tinted windows. Anyone not removing the tinted glass faces three years in jail, confiscation of the vehicle and a $1,200 fine.
Pakistan's information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, confirms that the army is now deployed "all over the tribal areas". "Our rapid action forces are there, they have sealed the border." The information minister's assurance that "no one is allowed to come in from Afghanistan" is part of the new official spin from Islamabad, "part of Pakistan's commitment to the international community against terrorism".
The information minister insists that Pakistan has not received from Washington any satellite pictures of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri or the al-Qaeda top 50 hiding in Pakistani territory. But much more interesting is his current estimation that US forces "would never enter Pakistan". Pakistan may have "sealed the border" with Afghanistan, but how to unseal it for the Americans is a matter to be discussed face-to-face by Rumsfeld and Musharraf this week. For this meeting, Rumsfeld can draw on his experience of discussing touchy issues with former CIA asset Saddam back in Baghdad in 1983.
The previous, official Pakistani script that its army could not legally enter in the semi-autonomous tribal areas has been reduced to dust. Hardline Islamist, anti-American sectors in Pakistan will not be amused. While the Musharraf system sells to Washington once again the idea they are trying to help the Americans to fight "the terrorists", nobody can tell with any degree of certainty what exactly Musharraf's game is, the Inter-Services Intelligence's game or the army's game.
And what if bin Laden decides not to follow the script? According to sources close to the Pakistani newspaper Khabrain, bin Laden has made his seven bodyguards take an oath to kill him in the event that he is in any danger of being arrested. He will try to blow himself up. Western diplomatic sources, on the other hand, prefer to insist that if bin Laden is arrested according to the current Pentagon plan, the whole operation will be kept secret - to be disclosed only a few weeks or days before the American presidential election in November.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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Waziristan Operation Successful, Objectives Achieved
Updated on 2004-02-27 08:50:34
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan : Feb 27 (PNS) - Director General, Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), Major General Shaukat Sultan has said the recently ended operation in South Waziristan Agency remained completely successful and its objectives were achieved.
Giving background of the operation, the DG said, last year on October 12, an operation was conducted in Angoor Adda, on confirmed reports that some terrorists were taking shelter in the area. In that operation eight terrorists were killed and 18 others arrested, he said while speaking in PTV programme 'News Night, late Wednesday night. This year on January 8, a search operation was conducted on the suspicion that some foreign terrorists were present in the area, Shaukat Sultan said.
Later, he said, a new strategy was adopted under which the tribal elders were asked to hand over the persons who give shelter to foreign terrorists. A list of suspected persons, involved in facilitating foreign terrorists, was handed over to these elders. The tribal elders, handed over most of them but uptill the given deadline, no foreign terrorist had surrendered, he added.
Clarifying the notion of wanted men he said, every person involved in terrorism and extremism is wanted. He said there is no list of wanted men in Pakistan, adding Pakistan's war on terrorism is broad based and it wants to root out menace of terrorism and extremism from the country.
He confirmed the arrest of some foreign women during the recent operation in South Waziristan Agency. He termed reports about presence of Ayman al-Zawahiri as fiction fantasies. About arrest of al-Zawahiri's son during the operation, he said it could not be confirmed until the completion of investigations. To a question, he said all tribals are cooperating and situation in the area is calm and peaceful.
Shaukat Sultan added that Pak army entered in tribal areas with the cooperation and counseling of tribal elders. Appreciating people of tribal areas, he said they are as Patriotic as any other Pakistani. He said, with the entrance of Pak army in tribal areas, roads have been built, schools and dispensaries have been set up for the uplift of the area's common man.
Responding to a question about the struggle of Kashmiris, the DG ISPR said, Kashmiris' indigenous struggle is for their legitimate right of self-determination which is clearly mentioned in the resolutions of UN Security Council. He said India is itself involved in massive state terrorism and human rights violations to suppress Kashmiri's indigenous struggle. He said Pakistan morally and diplomatically supports Kashmiris in their struggle to attain their right of self-determination.
Participating in the Programme, Foreign Office Spokesman, Masood Khan denied reports of Pak-US joint operation. He said Pakistan time and again clarified that such reports are baseless and have no reality. He said, Pakistan has conducted every operation on its soil on its own and there is no involvement of any foreign troops. The spokesman said, Pakistan was committed to root out terrorism as it was harming the image of Pakistan as well as economy and social progress of the country. He underlined the need to promote culture of tolerance in the society. He said, world community is highly appreciative of Pakistan's role in the global war on terrorism.

The End.
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>> SEOUL WATCH 1...

Roh's road: Is there a map?
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Our last article (One year on: South Korea's accidental president, February 27) sketched the background to the rise of Roh Moo-hyun, who this Wednesday marked the end of his first year as South Korea's president. One down, four more to go. So how is he doing?
Pretty awful, to be honest. That's not just my view, but the verdict of most South Koreans. Friend and foe alike reckon he's mostly making a hash of it. Yet ironically, with parliamentary elections due in just six weeks time on April 15, the same polls that give Roh a low rating suggest that the new Uri (We) breakaway party, which backs him, is in the lead. So what is going on in Seoul's febrile politics?
To be fair, not everything is Roh's fault. You can't blame him for the North Korean nuclear crisis, on which the latest six-party talks in Beijing have certainly pushed his first anniversary off the front pages. For that, Kim Jong-il and (in part) George W Bush are responsible, with South Korea caught in the middle.
Nor can last year's low gross domestic product (GDP) growth (under 3 percent) be laid at Roh Moo-hyun's door. South Korea's credit-card bubble, which burst last month with the nationalization of LG Card, the market leader, had already caused a backlash as debt-ridden consumers tightened their belts. But the policy of promoting plastic to boost demand - and the tax take, since plastic leaves records - was the idea of the previous Kim Dae-jung administration. Roh Moo-hyun merely inherited the consequences: faltering domestic demand.
Yet at least with Kim Dae-jung, you knew where you were. After a lifetime preparing himself to lead his country, he won the presidency at the fourth attempt - and at once took charge. Coming to power amid the worst of the Asian financial crisis, Kim pulled South Korea back from the brink of sovereign default - and went on to pursue vigorous restructuring and reform. Tearing down the old Korea Inc and Fortress Korea mentalities, he left South Korea a far healthier and more open economy than he found it. He didn't, alas, do the same for politics or corruption; Kim Jong-il got paid for their June 2000 North-South summit.
With Roh, it's amateur hour
Still, that I call leadership. With Roh Moo-hyun, by contrast, it's amateur hour. One looks in vain for any overarching vision or clear strategy. Not that this is unprecedented. Another Kim, Roh's erstwhile mentor Kim Young-sam (president 1993-98), was equally inconsistent: switching from dove to hawk on North Korea, and from economic reform to complacency, leading to catastrophe in his final annus horribilis of 1997. Rumor had it that YS used to ask his barber what people were thinking, and react accordingly.
But at least Kim Young-sam had some dignity and political smarts. Roh, by his own admission, is overwhelmed by the burdens of office. Last autumn, he frankly admitted he wasn't up to the job, and said he'd hold an (unconstitutional) referendum by December and step down if he lost. It never happened.
Frankly, this was disgraceful. South Korea's young democracy is robust, but it's grossly irresponsible thus to mess with the due political process. Why not wait until April's parliamentary election? All the worse if, as it now seems, this was in fact a ploy for Roh to restore his own plunging ratings. In effect, he scared voters by threatening them with the unknown so that they'd rally 'round. What a cheap trick.
Then there's his hypocrisy, if not worse, on corruption. Roh Moo-hyun campaigned as the people's candidate. His supporters brandished piggy-banks, to contrast their few pennies with the opposition Grand National Party's fat corporate bankroll. The latter has been amply exposed: ongoing probes have revealed massive illegal funding of the GNP by most of South Korea's largest companies.
Yet Roh himself is far from squeaky-clean, even if the sums are smaller. Two close advisers have been charged with taking illicit donations. Roh denies all knowledge, but a special counsel appointed by the GNP-controlled National Assembly is due to report in early March. Depending on its findings, it's not impossible that the opposition - including the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), on whose ticket Roh was elected president but which he has since alienated - could begin impeachment proceedings.
No stand on corporate reform, union militancy
At best, Roh now has a real credibility problem. It's not so much that, in office, he has tacked more to the right. That's normal. Kim Dae-jung too dismayed his left-wing supporters, but saved his nation, by ditching easy populist rhetoric when he had to confront the realities of running a globalized economy.
But with Roh, you wonder if the guy at the wheel knows where he's going - or even if he ever learned to drive. Where does he stand, for instance, on two key issues: corporate reform and union militancy? With his populist past as a labor lawyer, he was expected to harry the chaebol and favor workers. In fact he has vacillated on both. At one point he asked prosecutors not to go too hard on SK, the third-largest conglomerate, for perpetrating an accounting fraud to the tune of more than US$1 billion.
As for labor, rail unions that struck (illegally) against privatization felt the full force of the riot police. But that was the exception. Most everyone else - truckers, bank workers, et al - who held the country to ransom last summer got what they wanted, with the government encouraging employers to cave in. South Korea badly needs better industrial relations, but true compromise is not the same as surrender.
Then there's the cabinet - or was. Half of Roh's original appointees have already quit: some to run in April's elections - in Seoul ministers are not normally members of parliament - but many because they were just awful at the job. Vowing to end the bad habit of over-frequent reshuffles, Roh Moo-hyun had chosen an avowedly experimental cabinet - including, to his great credit, four women, twice as many as ever before. These are doing well, but many of the chaps were bad choices. In replacing them, Roh has wisely if belatedly gone for the older and wiser experienced hands whom he had initially shunned.
I said Roh has no vision, but he has one, er, capital idea. He wants to move the capital from Seoul some 100 kilometers further south - in the Chungchong provinces, which duly voted for him on this prospect. Whether this is any more than an expensive folly and distraction, we shall consider another time.
Bad ties with major media
Then there's the media. Roh Moo-hyun doesn't like the major Seoul dailies - the JoongAng, Chosun, and Dong-a Ilbos - nor they him. There is fault on both sides, but at best it's petty and undignified for a president to refuse interviews with the main papers. (He prefers online media favored by the young, such as Ohmynews, which support him.) At worst, in a society where not so long ago censorship was routine, it's a little ominous for the government to threaten the press. Under Kim Dae-jung the Seoul dailies had more than their share of tax and other audits. As a minister, Roh Moo-hyun strongly supported this.
What about foreign affairs? Granted, the North Korean nuclear crisis puts South Korea between a rock and a hard place - but here too, Roh is visibly wriggling. On his first (ever) trip to the United States last May, he got on better with George W had than many feared. He also surely made the strategically right choice, though unpopular at home especially with his supporters, in committing South Korean troops to Iraq.
So far so good. Less smart was to haver over this decision, saying out loud that he hoped in return the US would ease up on North Korea. Yes, obviously - but some messages are best conveyed in private. Embarrassing too was Roh's sacking last month of his foreign minister, Yoon Young-kwan, for failing to stop Foreign Ministry bureaucrats briefing against him. These professionals feared that Roh's leftist advisers, whom they derided as "Taliban", were imperiling ties with Washington. Roh's petulant reaction betrayed his personal pride and pique, but did nothing to resolve the underlying problem.
To be clear, in changing times any leader has every right to reconsider his or her country's orientation. The South Korea-US alliance may well need fine-tuning, perhaps even rethinking. But with Pyongyang ever ready to make mischief, and other powers such as China and Japan taking a keen interest, this needs to be done subtly, sotto voce, behind the scenes - not by playing to the gallery, or all too public infighting.
Hoping for diplomacy, finesse, magnanimity
I could go on - and Roh Moo-hyun will. With four more years of his presidential term still to run - assuming no more tantrums, or impeachment - we can but hope that with time he'll grow into the job: steering a steadier policy course, and learning a modicum of diplomacy, finesse and magnanimity.
What's more, he may even have parliament on his side. Remarkably, the new Uri (We) party - an MDP breakaway that backs Roh Moo-hyun, with just 47 of the assembly's 273 seats - is currently leading in the polls over both a discredited and fraying GNP and an MDP that risks being squeezed into oblivion.
Hope springs eternal, even for South Korea's jaded voters. In 2002 they elected Roh Moo-hyun, hoping for a new broom that would sweep clean. A year on, he looks a frail and unfit vehicle for these laudable aims - but they're stuck with him, and the GNP stinks, so maybe they'll give him a second chance.
Let's hope he deserves it. If not, then provided he appoints able ministers, perhaps Roh's own failings won't matter too much. He may even end up in effect sidelined, as the best argument yet for critics who have long reckoned that South Korea's imperial presidency concentrates too much power - and would like, for instance, to see parliament rather than the president appoint the prime minister and cabinet.
Four more years. As is clear, I wish the South Korean ship of state had a more skilled hand on the tiller at this critical time. But the people have chosen; so let's hope Roh Moo-hyun learns on the job. If not ...
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea, Leeds University, England.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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>> SEOUL WATCH 2...


One year on: South Korea's accidental president
By Aidan Foster-Carter
It seems Roh Moo-hyun's fate to be upstaged by North Korea. A year ago, his inauguration as South Korean president was spoiled by Pyongyang firing a missile hours beforehand. Just a small missile, and a routine test - but in the edgy atmosphere of the then new and escalating North Korean nuclear crisis, quite a party-pooper. Uncouth, too, given that Roh was and is committed to maintain his predecessor Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy of being nice to the North, seemingly more or less unconditionally.
A year later, it's happening again. On Wednesday, February 25, the day when Roh completed the first year of his five-year presidential term, the Korean main event was elsewhere - in Beijing, where six-party talks on the nuclear issue at last reconvened after half a year's hiatus. Here again it was Pyongyang that, after playing hard-to-get for months, suddenly named the date. Coincidence?
But this time maybe Roh won't mind his celebrations being overshadowed. For, frankly, what's to celebrate? From any angle, this supposed people's champion has had a pretty dreadful first year. His approval ratings have plunged from an initial 80 percent to 30 percent or less. His fan base is disillusioned, his foes are as hostile as ever - it's mutual - and in the United States and Japan worried allies are shaking their heads.
This seems a good moment not just to assess Roh Moo-hyun, but also take a wider look at the currents in self-styled "progressive" South Korean thinking that he (somewhat ambiguously) represents. It's important too to examine the context and background of his frankly unexpected rise to the top spot.
Roh Moo-hyun is an unlikely, even accidental president. Much in his background makes you want to root for him. A poor farm boy who couldn't afford college, he worked on building sites while studying to qualify as a lawyer - almost unheard of without a degree, in education-obsessed South Korea.
As a labor lawyer in Busan, South Korea's second city, he tussled with the then military dictatorship - briefly, but enough to burnish his street cred. He entered politics as a protege of local democratic hero Kim Young-sam - only to break with him when "YS" joined his ex-military persecutors to form a new conservative coalition, the forerunner of today's main opposition Grand National Party (GNP). On that ticket, Kim Young-sam was elected president in 1992, serving from 1993-98.
Principled loser spent years in the wilderness
For Roh Moo-hyun, this meant years in the wilderness, sustained by a faithful Internet fan club, Nosamo ("We Love Roh"), which admired him as a principled loser. Serving briefly as fisheries minister under Kim Dae-jung, Roh was still very much a dark horse when, two years ago, he threw his hat in the ring for the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP)'s nomination to run for president as DJ's successor.
In the elitist world of Seoul politics, all smoke-filled-room salons and backroom deals, this provincial would have stood no chance - had not the MDP, worried about low ratings, opted to pick its candidate via Korea's first-ever primary elections. Fed up with the same old smug faces and the smell of money, voters wanted change. Roh's folksy manner, and Internet campaigning by Nosamo, set a bandwagon rolling. The favorites were swept aside. The people had spoken, and their choice was Roh Moo-hyun.
That was just the nomination. Winning the election was something else. For most of 2002 Roh trailed in the polls - behind not only the GNP's Lee Hoi-chang, a former judge, but also Chung Mong-joon, a Hyundai scion running as an independent. By autumn, moves were afoot within the MDP to dump Roh.
Two things saved him. Roh and Chung joined forces - with the one to run to be decided by an opinion poll after a televised debate. Narrowly, the punters chose Roh. But above all, he rode public anger over the death of two teenage girls crushed by a US military vehicle, whose drivers were acquitted by a US Forces in Korea court martial. Mass candlelit vigils gave the world the impression that younger South Koreans viewed this tragic accident as a worse crime, and their longtime US ally as a greater threat, than the specter of Kim Jong-il's monstrous regime - even as a new North Korean nuclear crisis was unfolding.
Roh Moo-hyun milked that mood, making a virtue of never having visited the United Statets: Why go? To kowtow? It worked. On December 19, 2002, helped again by an Internet campaign that got normally apathetic twentysomethings out to vote, the poor farm boy beat the patrician judge. It was close - 48.9 percent to 46.6 percent - but a wider margin than last time, in 1997, when Kim Dae-jung just topped Lee Hoi-chang. Most of the other 4 percent of votes went to an avowed leftist, Kwon Young-gil of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP).
Young democracy chaotic, short-lived
Taking a long view, this result gave South Koreans reason for satisfaction with their young democracy, as the dark era of dictatorships alternating with violent regime change recedes ever further into history. Syngman Rhee, the Republic of Korea's first president in 1948, became an autocrat until overthrown by a student revolution in 1960. The restoration of democracy was chaotic, and proved short-lived.
In 1961, Park Chung-hee mounted Korea's first military coup in almost 600 years: a shocking event. With a rod of iron, Park drove South Korea's forced-march industrialization - out of African levels of poverty, to become today's economic juggernaut. For that achievement, and for his lack of corruption, many Koreans give him grudging posthumous respect - but others cannot forgive his brutal methods.
This remains a major fault line in Seoul's politics. Roh's radical supporters want to "cleanse history" by purging what they see as continuing remnants of the Park system - such as the dominance of a few big conglomerates (chaebol), leading to corruption and rampant inequality. More on all that another time.
Park Chung-hee died as he had lived: brutally - shot across the dinner table in 1979 by the head of his own Central Intelligence Agency. History then repeated itself: while democrats squabbled, soldiers seized power. Chun Doo-hwan (1980-88) was no Park, and is widely unforgiven for both the May 1980 Kwangju massacre, when paratroops killed at least 200 protesters, and gross personal corruption; investigators are still hunting for the loot.
But at least Chun went quietly. In 1987, with the world's gaze on the next year's Seoul Olympics, protests forced him to concede direct elections. (Roll on Beijing 2008!) The rival democrats, Kims YS and DJ, ran separately - thus handing victory to Chun's sidekick, ex-general Roh Tae-woo (no kin to Roh Moo-hyun). Also later jailed for corruption, Roh TW is universally reviled in Korea as mul (water). I beg to differ. He was South Korea's equivalent of former Soviet leader and reformer Mikhail Gorbachev, only more successful in his smooth transition to democracy. Soldiers like him are now back in barracks for good; how many other Asian countries can say as much?
If 1987 was the turning point, each subsequent presidential election has marked a further democratic milestone:
1987: First renewed direct election.
1992: First post-military fully civilian president, Kim Young-sam.
1997: First win by an opposition leader, Kim Dae-jung (whom Chun had tried to hang as a supposed communist).
2002: First victory by a non-elite political outsider, Roh Moo-hyun.
Formally, then, South Korean democracy is working pretty well. But substantively? And has Roh Moo-hyun delivered? Watch this space.
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea, Leeds University, England.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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>> BALLYHOO?

SPEAKING FREELY
India's paradox of growth
By Durgadas Roy
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
India's gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to grow by 8 percent in 2003-4 - the highest since economic reform began in 1991. Most research organizations have revised their estimates of GDP growth upwards following a turnaround in investment cycles, sustained buoyancy in consumption demand and supportive macro fundamentals. Emboldened, the government's Planning Commission now expects to achieve its GDP growth target for the 10th five-year plan (2002-2007).
Whether India can sustain its growth rate is debatable, but what is disturbing is that in the quest for higher GDP growth, the Planning Commission has become increasingly insensitive to the distribution aspect of growth. In the new era where competitiveness is the key parameter, the capacity and willingness to grow will decide the growth pattern of the country's states. And this is exactly what has happened.
India's prosperous states have prospered further, while poor ones have become poorer. The growth rates of the domestic product of major states have witnessed wide fluctuation. It is a truth universally acknowledged that growth for a single year looks good when it is on a low base. To that extent, advance estimates by the Central Statistical Organization, suggesting a heady, fast-paced 8.1 percent GDP growth for the current fiscal, need to be seen in the right perspective.
However, the latest figures do suggest not just a welcome turnaround in agriculture, but a greatly encouraging trend in both services and industry as well. The latest figure for agriculture, an estimated 9.12 percent growth, needs to be seen against an actual decline of as much as 5.2 percent in 2003. But growth drivers do seem to be more widespread across sectors this time.
Apart from buoyant farm output, there is sustained growth in such high-income services as trade, hotels, transport and communications. The handsome growth in commercial services is doubly fortunate. For one, it is much more sustainable. For another, it is much more growth enhancing. The last time the economy notched 7 percent growth, the massive hike in bureaucrats' pay and hence the heightened contribution of the public administration did shore up fiscal figures. Besides, the spurt in credit off-take, the runaway growth in the Sensex index and the primary market now back with a bang, should all boost banking and broking services. So the sector as a whole does seem headed for the fast lane, what with telephone connections to continue to grow at unheard-of-rates, and much better traffic growth in ports, railways and by air.
It is good that industrial growth seems to be gathering momentum as well, after years of modest growth. It remains to be seen if there is sustained pickup in investments. The rise of capital goods output and the surge in imports do suggest much improved investment demand. The bottom line really is much improved investment rates for the economy to traverse a new high-growth path. Year-end stock-taking is invariably Janus-faced: whether the focus is on the life of the individual or the state of the economy. This time to look ahead is also the time to look back.
But even this dualism can only explain partly why opinion about the Indian economy will remain somewhat divided as we head into the year 2005. India is no doubt shining, as the buzz word goes these days, but is it shining as brightly for all of its billion-plus people? The economy is in the middle of a great expansionary phase, but is this boom sustainable over the medium term? On the positive side, the macroeconomic climate has not looked better for years. While concerns about the fiscal deficit remain, interest rates have touched a new historic low, triggering a consumer boom, but also a significant reduction in the debt burden of corporates.
With a little helping hand from the weather gods, the prospects of the farm sector, too, have improved, raising hopes of more than 7 percent annual growth. But there are the downsides. For one, the paradox of India's "jobless" growth. Over the past few years, employment in India's organized sector, public or private, has come to a virtual standstill, causing millions of youth to join the jobless list every year.
For another, there has been a secular long-term decline in investment in agriculture, which has resulted in stagnant farm output and falling productivity. As a recent survey shows, India is today a divided country, of prosperous cities and poor villages, with a large and growing gap between consumption levels in urban and rural areas. No economy can afford such stark divides.
Modern growth processes leave large segments of the population completely untouched. Former World Bank president Robert McNamara estimated that about 40 percent of the developing world's population did not benefit at all from the economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s. Even other studies of the 1960s did not support the hypothesis that economic growth raises the share of income of the poorest segments of the population. Irma Adelman and Cynthia Taft Morris revealed in their studies that the poorest 60 percent group benefited only when there were broad-based efforts to improve the economy's human resources.
The policies of the state in these countries should be oriented towards poverty alleviation, employment generation, satisfying basic needs of the people and reduction in income inequality. Dr Amartya Sen has cautioned policy-makers that reform must be person-related and driven by ethical goals. While markets, GDP growth and technological change are the focus of most reform, it is important to ensure that reform advances the cause of life and freedom, particularly of the deprived. Taking birth expectancy at birth and the infant mortality rate as two basic measures of the quality of life, Sen brought out some features of the Chinese reform experience that are not as bright as the rapid material progress that has caught everyone's attention around the world.
Anyone who looks at India's post-liberalization period must admit that the country's employment growth rate, with a rising population, only worsened the situation. Warning bells have been sounded by the International Labor Organization (ILO), which has pointed out that the economic reform process initiated in the 1990s may not have generated enough employment opportunities. Employment growth has decelerated in the past five to six years. According to ministry of labor data, for the very first time, employment in the organized sector actually fell in 2001-02. During 1990-96, employment in the public sector increased by 0.58 percent per year, but during 1996-2003, it has fallen steeply to a negative 0.50 percent; and during 1990-96, employment in the organized private sector increased by 1.56 percent per year, but during 1996-2003, this growth rate declined dramatically to just 0.11 percent per year.
Whenever a conflict between growth and employment is unavoidable and optimization of one results in a setback to the other, employment ought to be given priority over output in India due to the following reasons. First, the life of the unemployed, particularly those belonging to the lower strata of society, is very miserable. Keeping the pitiable condition of the unemployed in view, the need for social security measures for them is felt in all egalitarian societies. However, there are no social security arrangements for the unemployed in this country. Unemployed persons in India either survive on the support they sometimes get from other members of the family or they fall back on their meager savings, if any. Therefore, employment generation in Indian conditions must receive overriding priority.
In the past five years, even after taking into account the "feel good" and shining of 2003-04, real GDP growth would have averaged around 5.7 percent per year, as compared to 6.7 percent per year during 1992-96. Perhaps no single piece of economic data is awaited and examined more eagerly than that on growth of real GDP. A host of business houses, banks and international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, not to speak of governmental agencies, report quarterly appraisals of India's economic growth. These reports are preceded and followed by guesstimates of expected short-term prospects for GDP growth.
Traditional students of economics would find this emphasis misplaced since they have been trained to believe that economic growth should be assessed in the longer term when both cyclical and seasonal effects on GDP have been smoothened. Analysis of quarterly GDP growth, they would argue, mixes up the role of seasonal, cyclical and trend factors. The traditional theory of economic growth concentrates exclusively on the long term and emphasizes only trend factors. Such an analysis would invariably lead to what might be called the "paradox of growth".
Durgadas Roy was a professor of economics at the State University of New York and is now director, Indian Council for Economic Research, India.

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
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Special Report
Jeremiah Greenspan
By Shawn Macomber
Published 2/27/2004 12:07:01 AM


Alan Greenspan touched the third rail of politics Wednesday -- he told the truth.

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve had been asked to speak to the House Budget Committee on Social Security and Medicare. And with his characteristic precision, Greenspan told legislators that they lacked "the resources to do it all." Minutes after the hearing ended, a bi-partisan coalition took to the airwaves to mock and belittle the Fed Chairman, while assuring the American people that the, yes, their government can and will "do it all."
Most depressingly, there was not a single well-publicized characterization of Greenspan's testimony that approached anything resembling honesty. (A transcript is available here) For all the bad acting it inspired, what Greenspan actually said was that "the enormous uncertainty" over the massive outlays Social Security and Medicare will soon require was a problem worthy of more than idle discussion.
"I believe that a thorough review of our spending commitments -- and at least some adjustment in those commitments -- is necessary for prudent policy," Greenspan said. This might seem a bit glib considering the topic, but Greenspan is well known as a forward thinker. He's not the kind of man to sit around and wait for the storm to gather and then play crisis control. That's a job for our elected representatives.
THE SITUATION IS DIRE, however. According to a study by the Cato Institute, Social Security is not only the largest U.S. government program, accounting for 23 percent of total federal spending, it is "the largest government program in the world." And within 15 years, Social Security will begin to spend more on benefits than it takes in. In his testimony Greenspan recommended taking steps to solve this problem.
The facts are on his side: From 1935 until 1950, Social Security absorbed only 2 percent of a worker's net income (one percent from the employee, one percent from the employer). Today it is 15.3 percent (7.65 percent employee, 7.65 percent employer). Greenspan pointed out that we now have three workers supporting each retiree on Social Security. By 2025 that will be reduced to just over two workers for each retiree. We face an unprecedented deficit and the looming retirement of 77 million health-nut baby boomers.
Greenspan said what needed to be said. Either the retirement age has to go up or Congress will have to find a way to lower yearly increases in benefits. But the Fed Chairman was hardly callous in his recommendations. "I also believe that we have an obligation to those in and near retirement to honor what has been promised to them," he explained. Changes should be implemented "soon enough so that future retirees have time to adjust their plans for retirement spending and to make sure that their personal resources, along with what they expect to receive from the government, will be sufficient to meet their retirement needs."
IT WAS HARDLY let-them-eat-cake material, but Greenspan's testimony was greeted as "outrageous, insipid, preposterous" by Sen. Arlen Specter, who declared the Greenspan plan "the worst idea I ever heard of." Rep. Pat Toomey, Specter's conservative challenger in the upcoming Pennsylvania Republican primary, admitted there was an entitlement problem, but still protested: "This is exactly the road I don't want to go down and won't support."
Sen. John Kerry called for a tax increase to stave off Social Security cuts. Terry McAuliffe, determined not to be out-lied or out-spun, made up his own version of the testimony: "President Bush paints a rosy picture of the economy, but Alan Greenspan's warning today couldn't have been clearer -- President Bush's economic policies have been a disaster," he said. So bad, in fact, that "the Federal Reserve Chairman has recommended severe cuts to Social Security or raising taxes." Predictably, William Novelli, head of the AARP terrorist group, said trimming benefits "would be unfair to boomers and younger workers, pulling the rug out from under their retirement security."
Perhaps most laughable of all the attacks came from Sen. John "two Americas" Edwards who was "outraged" that the financial guru would suggest "that we should extend George Bush's tax cuts on unearned wealth while cutting Social Security benefits that working people earn." Just raise taxes and -- poof! -- the problem goes away.
A few hours later Edwards released his inspiring but vague plan to "raise 10 million people out of poverty" to some fanfare. "When did it become acceptable to dismiss our challenges as just the way things are?" Edwards asked supporters. "When did it become acceptable to ignore our toughest problems because they would take decades and decades to solve? When did 'it's just too hard to do' become an excuse?"
When, indeed, John? I think it was right about the time Alan Greenspan finished up his testimony and handed the Congressional asylum back to the inmates.
Shawn Macomber is a reporter for The American Spectator. When not on the campaign trail, he runs the website Return of the Primitive.


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Clinton's Midnight Madness vs. the Bush Administration
Lieberman Op-Ed in Tech Central Station
by Ben Lieberman
February 24, 2004
Remember all those "midnight regulations" finalized by outgoing Clinton administration officials during their final two months in power? The Bush administration would prefer you forget, as its efforts to deal with them have proven to be failures.
To its credit, the incoming Bush officials, faced with a wave of these politically correct but substantively problematic environmental regulations, sought to double check their merits before allowing them to take effect. As a result, they were hit with nasty attacks from journalists and environmental activists. The furor over these so-called "environmental rollbacks" frequently dominated the news in 2001 prior to 9/11.
The double standard was obvious, as most of the criticism came from individuals and organizations that had given Clinton a free pass for doing next to nothing on these matters until the very end of his eight year run.
The first midnight regulation to hit the fan was the one setting a tougher standard for allowable levels of arsenic in drinking water. The media, most of whom had shown absolutely no interest in the subject from 1993 through 2000, suddenly couldn't get enough of the claims from groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council that Bush was allowing children to be poisoned with bad water. The New York Times made arsenic the first of its many factually dubious crusades against the Bush environmental record.
In truth, there were plenty of reasons to believe the existing standard was sufficiently protective of public health and that the new standard would impose a punishing economic burden on many rural water systems and their customers. Nonetheless, stung by the criticism and unable to get its own arguments across, the administration eventually backed off and declined to alter the new standard.
Bush did go ahead and change other last minute Clinton rules, including a new energy efficiency standard for central air-conditioners and a snowmobile ban in Yellowstone Park. But these and other rule changes, in addition to getting mostly negative media coverage, have been challenged on legal grounds. So far, the federal courts have handed the administration several setbacks.
The Department of Energy (DOE) rule on air-conditioners, one of the very last under Clinton, called for a 30 percent energy efficiency increase over the existing standard. The Clinton DOE's original proposal called for a less stringent 20 percent increase, in part because the agency's own analysis found that the tougher 30 percent standard would raise the cost of air-conditioners more than many consumers would earn back in the form of energy savings. But on its final day, the Clinton DOE went with the 30 percent increase.
The incoming Bush administration reviewed the rule and decided to move the standard back to 20 percent. However, this change was rejected last month by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The court essentially concluded that the Clinton rule, once promulgated, was final and not subject to further modification. A separate legal challenge to reinstate the Bush rule is currently pending, so the issue is not yet over. But for now, it looks like another win for the Clinton regulators.
Bush's repeal of the Yellowstone snowmobile ban is also in legal limbo. As with many other midnight regulations, the Clinton administration demanded far more of its successor than it did of itself. In fact, Clinton did not set even modest snowmobile use restrictions on his watch, though he was more than happy to saddle the incoming Bush team with a total ban, to take effect in 2003.
Faced with angry Yellowstone Park visitors and snowmobile industry opposition, the Bush administration opted for a different approach. It set the first-ever emissions standards for snowmobiles, and then it modified Clinton's Yellowstone rule to allow limited use of these cleaner, new snowmobiles, but no out-and-out ban.
Green groups challenged these changes, and last December a federal district court shot them down, holding that the Bush administration had not sufficiently justified them. Appeals are ongoing and the ban has been delayed, but again it looks like Clinton will prevail.
Overall, Bush has lost many more midnight regulation battles than he has won. The adverse consequences of these problematic Clinton regulations--higher water bills, costlier air-conditioners, less fun for Yellowstone visitors--will probably get blamed on the current administration, though in truth it did at least try to get out of the trap set for it by the Clinton administration.

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Corruption probe into French union fund
By Robert Graham in Paris
Published: February 27 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: February 27 2004 4:00
The richest fund for social and cultural activities run by France's trades unions and belonging to Electricit? de France and Gaz de France, the giant electricity and gas utilities, is under investigation for alleged corrupt activities.
The investigation by Paris judicial authorities follows complaints of misuse of funds handled by this institution, the bastion of the CGT, the largest of the country's three main trades union confederations.
The move comes at a time when the centre-right government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin is anxious to break the CGT's stranglehold on the evolution of these two giant utilities as France needs to adapt to EU energy liberalisation directives.
The biggest break on changing these utilities current statutes to pave the way for partial privatisation is the resistance to change from the CGT, the controlling trades union in these bodies.
However, political analysts believe any step by the government to use the investigation against the CGT could harden union attitudes against any change to the EdF and Gaz de France statutes.
Partial privatisation has been constantly postponed since Mr Raffarin's government took office in June 2002 and is now scheduled for 2005 at the earliest.
The fund under investigation has an annual budget of around ?400m (?266.5m). This is largely financed by an obligatory contribution of 1 per cent of annual electricity and gas sales.
In tandem with this investigation, the public accounts commission is looking at the activities of the fund which employs 3,700 full-time union members and an even larger number of part-time staff.
The main purpose of the fund was to help present and former employees and provide facilities such as holiday camps. But over the years it has built up an extensive property folio, become responsible for the running of the EdF and Gaz de France canteens, while also being a big sponsor of national and local cultural events.
The investigation stems from a complaint from a former EdF employee, who alleged the fund was directly and indirectly financing activities that had no connection with its proper role.
The allegations include the creation of fake jobs, over-invoicing on service contracts and illicit involvement in external catering activity.

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Une information judiciaire a ?t? ouverte contre le comit? d'entreprise d'EDF-GDF
LE MONDE | 26.02.04 | 14h24
La Caisse centrale d'activit?s sociales, g?r?e par la CGT, est suspect?e d'abus de confiance et d'escroquerie. Son ancien pr?sident se retranche derri?re le contr?le de l'entreprise et de l'Etat.
Une information judiciaire dirig?e contre le comit? d'entreprise d'EDF-GDF, le plus riche de France, a ?t? ouverte, jeudi 19 f?vrier, pour "abus de confiance, escroquerie, faux et usage de faux, complicit? et recel" par le parquet de Paris.
Jean-Marie d'Huy, juge du p?le financier du tribunal de grande instance, qui avait d?j? instruit, en 1997, les surfacturations d'Alcatel-CIT aux d?pens de France T?l?com, va enqu?ter sur des malversations financi?res pr?sum?es au sein de la Caisse centrale d'activit?s sociales (CCAS) d'EDF-GDF, g?r?e de tout temps par la CGT, majoritaire.
Une structure qui brasse pr?s de 400 millions d'euros, emploie 3 700 salari?s permanents et 6 000 saisonniers, dispose d'un parc immobilier consid?rable, g?re la restauration des cantines et revendique la place de premier producteur de spectacles de France.
Cette instruction fait suite ? une enqu?te pr?liminaire ordonn?e ? la mi-2003 au parquet de Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis), apr?s le d?p?t d'une plainte d'un ancien salari? d'EDF, fin mai 2003. D'autres avaient suivi. Selon Victor Fremaux, un cadre retrait? d'EDF, "la CCAS finance directement ou indirectement des activit?s sans aucun rapport avec sa mission". Le plaignant fait notamment ?tat d'emplois fictifs, de prestations surfactur?es de fournitures et de services, comme des locations de voitures, et de prestations de restauration pour des organisations tierces. Le dossier avait ensuite ?t? transf?r? en octobre 2003 au parquet de Paris.
Outre la justice, la Cour des comptes a ?galement d?cid? de se pencher sur le fonctionnement de cet organisme hors normes, dont certaines d?rives avaient, ? l'origine ?t? d?nonc?es par son ancien directeur g?n?ral, Jean-Claude Laroche, aussit?t suspendu de ses fonctions. Dans un courrier au conseil d'administration, ce dernier avait attir? l'attention sur des "irr?gularit?s lourdes" et des "dysfonctionnements" de gestion. Elles ont aliment? une partie des plaintes en cours sur certaines op?rations jug?es "suspectes".
Parmi celles-l?, la signature d'un contrat de location de voitures avec une soci?t? de Montreuil, dirig?e par un proche du Parti communiste, comme celle d'un contrat d'extincteurs. Financ?e par la CCAS, la promotion d'un compact-disc du groupe Sergent Garcia contre la guerre en Irak, encart? ? 77 000 exemplaires dans le quotidien du PCF, L'Humanit?, avait ?galement aliment? les soup?ons.
"R?GLEMENTS DE COMPTES"
R?futant en bloc ces diverses accusations, Jean Lavielle, ancien pr?sident du conseil d'administration de la CCAS, remplac? par Evelyne Valentin, par ailleurs conseill?re r?gionale communiste d'Auvergne, avait d?nonc? dans Le Mondedu 24 octobre 2003 une campagne de "r?glements de comptes ou de ranc?urs personnelles". Il s'interrogeait : "Est-ce vraiment un hasard qu'au moment o? l'on attaque frontalement le service public, on attaque dans le m?me temps le comit? d'entreprise qui repr?sente le monde du travail ?" Il se retranchait aussi derri?re le contr?le exerc? par la direction de l'entreprise publique et l'Etat, pour r?pondre aux accusations.
La m?fiance s'est toutefois install?e au sein de l'organisme aujourd'hui dirig? par Olivier Frachon, ancien responsable ? la F?d?ration CGT des mines et de l'?nergie, et petit-fils de Beno?t Frachon, ancien dirigeant de la Conf?d?ration. Le 26 novembre 2003, les administrateurs des deux syndicats de la CFDT et de la CGC ont refus? d'approuver le bilan financier. R?cemment encore, ils ont interpell? les dirigeants de la CCAS sur le financement des prestations de restauration assur?e par une filiale la CCAS lors du congr?s des cadres UFICT-CGT ? Tours.
R?uni le 19 f?vrier, le bureau du conseil d'administration n'a pas ?t? saisi de l'ouverture, le jour m?me, de l'information judiciaire. Les responsables CGT ont indiqu? avoir tardivement d?couvert l'information sur cette proc?dure. Jeudi, dans un communiqu?, la FNME-CGT devait renouveler sa demande de "transparence", en rappelant qu'elle avait demand? l'intervention de la Cour des comptes. Une exigence ?galement formul?e par le syndicat CFDT qui, jeudi, annonce son intention de se porter partie civile afin "d'avoir acc?s au dossier et ainsi faire valoir les int?r?ts des agents actifs et inactifs des Industries ?lectriques et gazi?res".


Ariane Chemin et Michel Delberghe

* ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 27.02.04

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D?mission de Richard Perle, conseiller du Pentagone connu pour ses positions dures sur l'Irak
AP | 26.02.04 | 21:36
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Richard Perle, un conseiller du Pentagone connu pour ses positions bellicistes sur l'Irak, a d?missionn? de son poste au Conseil pour la politique de d?fense.
Dans sa lettre de d?mission remise au secr?taire ? la D?fense Donald Rumsfeld, dat?e du 18 f?vrier et rendu publique jeudi, M. Perle dit quitter son poste parce qu'il ne veut pas que ses vues controvers?es soient ?attribu?es ? vous ou au pr?sident, et particuli?rement pas pendant une campagne pr?sidentielle?.
Sa d?mission intervient alors qu'il vient de publier un livre dans lequel il pr?ne une action forte pour combattre le terrorisme. ?Beaucoup des id?es dans ce livre sont controvers?es et je veux ?tre libre de les d?fendre sans que cela soit repris dans la campagne?. AP
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The Human Rights of Israelis
What the International Court of Justice has not been asked.
By Anne Bayefsky
The International Court of Justice in the Hague is being asked by the U.N. General Assembly to provide advice on the "legal consequences" of Israel's security fence. Predating the request for such advice, was a November report from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan detailing the harm done to Palestinians said to result from the fence and a December 2003 General Assembly resolution already deciding that the fence violates international law. The question before the court has therefore been carefully crafted to elicit a list of negative human-rights consequences for Palestinians.
One element, however, is missing: the human rights of Israelis. Secretary General Annan's report does not describe a single terrorist act against Israelis. The same 2003 General Assembly which decried the fence was also marked by its refusal to adopt a resolution on the rights of Israeli children -- after passing one on Palestinian children.
The U.N. message is clear -- the human rights of Israelis are not part of the equation. If they were, the legal balancing act would be this: On the one hand, suicide-bombing violates the following rights and freedoms of Israelis -- all derived from international human rights treaties ratified by Israel: the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to equality and freedom from persecution, security of the person, the right to health and well-being, the right to safe working conditions, the right to work, freedom from incitement to violence or war, freedom of religion, the right to the protection of the family, the right to the protection of the child, the right to education, freedom of movement, the right to vote, freedom of association, the right to an adequate standard of living and the right of self-determination.
Suicide bombings (along with other terrorist acts) target Israelis at work, at play, at worship, and in transit, anywhere, anytime. They have been hit in synagogues, at bar mitzvahs, at Passover seders, moving from home to work or to school, while voting, gathering with friends in public places, in restaurants, cafes, and discotheques, in their homes and in their bedrooms. They kill and maim children and adults, women and men. They destroy health and any chance for happiness or well-being.
The violation of human rights by suicide bombing, starting with the right to life, falls within the category of the gravest human-rights violations in international law: It is a crime against humanity -- according to the definitions in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Statute of the International Criminal Court, as well as reports of organizations such as Amnesty International. The major human-rights instruments also render it an attempt at genocide or "the commission of acts with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
The violation of the right to life by suicide bombing fits one other label of modern times -- ethnic cleansing, or the systematic removal of a group of people identified by ethnicity from a certain area through killing or forced migration. Suicide-bombing kills some Israelis, encourages others to leave the country, and discourages Jews from visiting or immigrating. The specific intent is to ethnically cleanse the area of Jews, a fact which has already been accomplished in all other neighboring Arab states, and most other Arab and Muslim countries.
So on the one hand, Israelis are subject to crimes against humanity, attempted genocide, and an effort to accomplish ethnic cleansing. International treaties demand that Israel protect the human rights of its citizens, just as the government of any country would be expected to protect its citizens from the most grievous offences known to humankind.
What about the other hand -- the rights of Palestinians? Suicide-bombing also violates the rights of Palestinians. It violates the right of Palestinian children not to take part in hostilities. Palestinian children having been used as suicide bombers and armed combatants, their right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and their entitlement to the protection and care necessary for their well-being, have also been violated. The Convention on the Rights of the Child says "the education of the child shall be directed to ...the development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms...[and] for civilizations different from his or her own.., [and] for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance... among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups". The right of the Palestinian child to an education which promotes tolerance and respect is violated by Palestinian media, schools, textbooks, posters, and summer camps -- all of which routinely encourage Palestinian children to hate, and to harm their neighbors.
Palestinians have other rights which have been limited or infringed, like the right to work and freedom of movement. These rights are limited or infringed, however, not by Israel's fence, but by the terrorists who live and operate among them. If an armed robber takes a hostage and in the course of the crime the hostage is killed by police, the law states that the death of the hostage has been caused by the robber, not the police. For if there was no armed robbery, the hostage would not have been harmed. If there were no terrorism, there would be no fence -- and no "consequences of the fence" as the International Court has been asked to state in isolation from the acts that preceded it. The Palestinian civilian population is hostage to the terrorists and suicide-bombers among them. Israel's actions, like those of the police officer, are taken in fulfillment of its legal responsibilities to protect and end violent and illegal behavior.
The language of human rights is one of the most powerful political currencies of our times. That is why terrorists attempt to use it to their own ends, and claim victimhood for violations for which they are responsible. The International Court of Justice is at a crucial juncture in its history: to become another weapon in the terrorists' arsenal or to reject the gross abuse of the rule of law and the attempt to deny the equal value of the human rights of Israelis.

-- Anne Bayefsky is an adjunct professor of law at Columbia Law School. A version of this appeared in the Jerusalem Post and is reprinted with permission.
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VERGEWALTIGUNGEN IM IRAK
Sex-Skandal ersch?ttert US-Army
Der wohl gr??te Missbrauchsskandal ihrer Geschichte ersch?ttert die US-Armee. In den letzten 18 Monaten wurden in Irak, Kuweit und Afghanistan 112 F?lle von sexuellen ?bergriffen auf Soldatinnen gemeldet. Den Einsatzkr?ften komme fern der Heimat der Sinn f?r Recht und Gesetz abhanden, so Politiker und Anw?lte.
Washington - Von den 112 F?llen wurden 86 aus dem Bereich der Armee gemeldet, zw?lf aus der Marine und acht bei der Luftwaffe, berichtet die US-Tageszeitung "New York Times". Sechs F?lle registrierte das Marine Corps. Aus Milit?rkreisen hie? es, ein Gro?teil der F?lle werde untersucht, teilweise seien bereits disziplinarische Ma?nahmen eingeleitet worden.
Die Anzeigen der Soldatinnen beziehen sich nicht nur auf die Vergewaltigungen und sexuellen ?bergriffe selbst: Nach dem Missbrauch erhielten sie unzureichende medizinische Hilfe, die Vorf?lle w?rden ungen?gend untersucht, berichtete eine Anw?ltin der Opfer, Christine Hansen. "Am meisten f?rchten sie aber Racheaktionen von Kollegen", so Hansen. "Wer petzt, ist noch viel schlimmer dran."
Nach Ansicht von Senatoren und der Anw?ltin ist es kein Zufall, dass sich der Missbrauch gerade da ereignet, wo ?rzte und Polizei nicht schnell zu erreichen sind. "Die T?ter f?hlen sich sicher, deshalb fehlt ihnen jeglicher Gerechtigkeitssinn", so Hansen.
In der amerikanischen Presse wird bereits vom gr??ten Milit?r-Sexskandal der Geschichte gesprochen. Die Anschuldigungen ?bertr?fen sogar die so genannten "Tailhook"- und "Drill-Sergeant"-Skandale, die Anfang der neunziger Jahre f?r Aufsehen sorgten.
1991 war die US-Navy in die Schlagzeilen geraten, nachdem bekannt wurde, dass Marineflieger bei den j?hrlichen Treffen der "Tailhook"-Vereinigung unter den Augen ihrer Gener?le abwechselnd Pornos anschauten und Soldatinnen in "Spie?rutenl?ufen" die Kleider vom Leib rissen. Beim zweiten Skandal f?nf Jahre sp?ter wurden mehrere Ausbilder wegen Vergewaltigung und Missbrauch ihrer Soldatinnen angeklagt. Das Gericht sprach alle Sergeants schuldig, die H?chststrafe lag damals bei 25 Jahren Gef?ngnis.
"Ungeheuerliche Gewalt in den eigenen Reihen"
Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld versprach eine schnelle Aufkl?rung der Aff?re. Ein von ihm eingesetzter Untersuchungsausschuss soll die Umst?nde der sexuellen ?bergriffe kl?ren und au?erdem der Frage nachgehen, wie die Armee mit Opfern sexueller Gewalt umgeht. Bei einer Anh?rung vor dem Senat mussten gestern bereits mehrere Vier-Sterne-Gener?le und F?hrungskr?fte aus dem Pentagon zu den schweren Vorw?rfen Stellung nehmen.
Vor allem weibliche Abgeordnete zeigten sich w?hrend der Anh?rung entsetzt. "Im Krieg gibt es immer Verluste", sagte die republikanische Senatorin Susan Collins. "Aber normalerweise werden die vom Feind verursacht und kommen nicht von unvorstellbarer Gewalt aus den eigenen Reihen."
Der demokratische Senator Ben Nelson ?u?erte die Bef?rchtung, dass das Problem im Pentagon nicht ernst genug genommen w?rde. "Ich kann bei der milit?rischen F?hrung keine angemessene Emp?rung erkennen", so Nelson.
Ein Milit?rsprecher versicherte jedoch, die F?lle w?rden mit der n?tigen Aufmerksamkeit untersucht. Sp?testens am 30. April muss das Pentagon seinen Untersuchungsbericht der ?ffentlichkeit vorstellen.

Julia Maria B?nisch
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WORLD POLICY JOURNAL

ARTICLE: Volume XX, No 4, Winter 2003/04 Print
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The Russian Roller Coaster
Ian Bremmer*

As 2003 ended, many Russia watchers shared an uneasy, we've-been-here-before feeling. Hard on the heels of the sudden arrest in late October of Mikhail Khodorkovsky-- the country's wealthiest businessman and the chairman of Yukos Oil, until he stepped down--came a flawed parliamentary election and an angry nationalist outcry over real or imagined American meddling in neighboring Georgia's "velvet revolution." Hence the credible worry that Russia is no longer safe for international investors and, more broadly, that xenophobic nationalism could poison hopes for an evolving democratic system based on the rule of law.

At the core of these concerns lies the still ambiguous figure of President Vladimir Putin. Is he persevering on the democratic path, as he claims, or, given his service as a KGB officer, is he returning Russia to its familiar autocratic fold? If the latter is the case, what will it mean for Russian relations with the West? Can Russia become a trusted ally and partner, or will it retreat into an ultimately self-defeating nationalism born of misdirected patriotism and the illusion of self-sufficiency bolstered by a wealth of raw materials and an undervalued currency?

My own view, notwithstanding these considerations and looking beyond the headlines generated by the Khodorkovsky affair, is that, for now at least, pessimism is premature. The aim of this essay is to recall the volatility of Western opinion about Russia, to weigh the pros and cons of Moscow's relations with the oligarchs, and to outline the three key tests for judging Putin's intentions.

Pessimism vs. Optimism
This is by no means the first time that the United States has had serious concerns about Russia. Indeed, ambivalence goes back to the height of the Cold War, when American public opinion was divided between those who wanted to engage the Soviet Union constructively and pursue d?tente, and those who believed that the USSR could never be anything but an "evil empire."

This ambivalence persisted even after 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist and the Russian Federation became an independent state. To some observers, Russia seemed on the verge of becoming one of the world's largest free market democracies and thus a potential partner and ally. Others saw a Russia still mired in its pre-capitalist Soviet ways, a backward country that nonetheless retained the means to annihilate the world. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now judge that Russia was something of both. But at the time, a plausible case could have been made to justify either the highest hopes or the deepest fears of Western policy-makers. This roller-coaster approach has endured and characterizes the West's "on again, off again" love affair with Russia.

The pessimists were in the ascendancy during the first years of the newborn Russian Federation, as the country verged on political, economic, and cultural chaos. The privatizations of the early 1990s were in truth a sham. With the tacit approval of President Boris Yeltsin's government, Russia's robber barons grabbed the nation's patrimony, with the result that most Russians decided that if this was free market democracy, they wanted no part of it. In the aftermath of this "reallocation" of wealth to the new private sector, a tiny class of super rich, overwhelmingly corrupt individuals-- the so-called oligarchs--stripped the assets of state-owned companies, leaving ordinary Russians considerably worse off than they had been under Soviet rule. The nation fragmented as central authority slackened, provincial leaders filled the power vacuum, and a bloody and inconclusive war in Chechnya drained valuable resources while demoralizing the armed forces. The possibility of a plunge into full-scale anarchy seemed a very real possibility at the time.

But by the latter half of the 1990s, it appeared that the optimists might have been right to keep the faith. By 1998, Russia indeed seemed to be on the road to democracy and free markets. Investor confidence was high. However, that August, with little warning, the inexperienced prime minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, devalued the ruble and announced that Russia would no longer meet its obligations to foreign bond-holders. A fresh Russian crisis materialized, and the ensuing mayhem pushed global financial markets to the brink of collapse.

The roller coaster plunged again toward pessimism. By the end of the Clinton administration, there was an animated foreign policy debate over "who lost Russia." While the the pundits pointed the finger of blame at everyone from President Boris Yeltsin to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, from the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund to the Russian robber barons and Harvard University professor Jeffrey Sachs, one thing was clear: virtually everyone agreed with the premise that Russia had indeed been lost.

On reflection, that pessimism was premature. Russia's by then chronically absentee President Yeltsin orchestrated a surprisingly smooth transition in 2000 to a relative unknown, Vladimir Putin, with as little bloodshed as the final Soviet handover of power to Yeltsin by Mikhail Gorbachev. Equally important, the economy rebounded impressively, due partly to the devaluation of the ruble and partly to high oil and other commodity prices. The war in Chechnya remained a major thorn in Putin's side, but the president's popularity soared on the strength of his hard line toward the Chechen rebels. Russia didn't seem to be in such bad shape after all.

Putin vs. The Oligarchs
Investors gradually recovered their confidence and have returned to the markets. Putin, viewed as a steady hand on the tiller, was an important factor in persuading investors that Russia might again be worthy of their trust. Indeed, Russian bond and equity markets have proved to be among the world's best performers over the past few years. Last October, the Moody's rating agency acknowledged the turnaround by giving Russia an investment-grade rating-- allowing it to attract a new class of portfolio investors. There was renewed talk of foreign direct investment in the country, as bankers once more filled business-class seats on flights to Moscow and financial institutions began hunting for office space. With his strong domestic hand, and a percolating economy bolstering his standing, Putin became one of the most popular elected leaders in the world, with approval ratings consistently over 70 percent.

What the investment bankers and investors who were lauding Putin's strength as a leader failed to grasp, however, was that in consolidating power in a country with little history of anything other than autocracy, Putin would drag his feet when it came to political reform. For better or worse, democracy is on hold in Russia. In contrast to Mikhail Gorbachev, who embarked simultaneously on political and economic reforms and, by so doing, fatally weakened his capacity to punish and reward recalcitrants,.Putin appears determined to pursue economic growth through a host of landmark legislative acts--tax, judicial, and land reform among them--while holding tightly to the reins of government.

Many financial analysts and investors mistakenly believed that the absence of political reform was at the root of the crisis of 1998. But it was a lack of central authority-- not the lack of democracy--that was the problem. When Putin was elected to the presidency, economic policy was effectively created and implemented by various provincial governors and businessmen-- all a law unto themselves. Putin correctly understood that rebuilding central authority and consolidating the Russian state had to be his priorities. And that meant, above all, finding some workable accommodation with the oligarchs.

When Putin took office, he struck a Faustian bargain with the oligarchs who had deeply embedded themselves in the policy-making process in the final years of Yeltsin's rule. According to an unwritten but clearly understood deal, the oligarchs would be permitted to keep their ill-gotten gains so long as they paid their taxes and forswore grand political ambitions. The latter was harder to police, but the more obvious strictures were that the oligarchs refrain from using their influence in the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, or in the executive branch to make policy and from using the media they controlled to criticize the government.


Drawing by Curtiss Calleo
While the requirement that the oligarchs stay out of politics was clear enough, it was not rigorously policed. However, when two of the original oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, used their television stations to broadcast criticism of the Kremlin, they found themselves under criminal prosecution in 2001 for money laundering and other charges. Both eventually fled the country, and their media holdings were stripped of their oppositionist character, effectively becoming cheerleaders for the Kremlin.

However, other channels of political influence remained open to the remaining oligarchs--a group of some dozen men who, among them, control roughly 70 percent of the Russian economy. Putin had retained Aleksandr Voloshin, Yeltsin's capable and savvy chief of staff. It was Voloshin who pushed through Putin's economic reforms and was the point man for dealing with the Bush administration. At the same time, he served as the intermediary within the Kremlin between Putin and "the Family," holdovers from the Yeltsin era with close ties to the business elite. With Voloshin as Putin's right-hand man, the oligarchs continued to have a voice in the corridors of power.

Moreover, the Duma had evolved from a rubber stamp for the Kremlin into a more independent legislative body. The oligarchs quickly adapted to the new situation, becoming sophisticated lobbyists and using their financial resources liberally and to marked effect. They exercised considerable influence, notably over tax legislation. Draft laws sent to the Duma by the Kremlin emerged at the end of the legislative process substantially amended, generally to the benefit of the oligarchs.

Putin may not have been happy with the oligarchs' continuing influence over economic policy, but he was more concerned with political challenges to his rule. After Berezovsky and Gusinsky fled into exile, there was just one billionaire who, in the Kremlin's view, continued to cross the line, refusing to observe the rules of the deal Putin believed he had made. This was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the CEO of the oil giant, Yukos, and Russia's wealthiest man, with an estimated net worth of $8 billion.

The Khodorkovsky Affair
Khodorkovsky was enthusiastically feted in the West for his eloquence and sophistication, and his willingness to play by Western rules. The then 30-something Yukos chief, with his trademark Spartan wardrobe, emerged as a notable leader among Russian executives in aspiring to and often achieving Western-style standards of management, accounting, and corporate governance. Khodorkovsky also spent considerable sums on public relations, charitable endeavors, and lobbying, both at home and in the United States. Even so, he remained unpopular in Russia, as the memory of how he had acquired his wealth--using his political connections to purchase some of Russia's choicest oil assets at fire-sale prices-- lingered in the public consciousness.

Early in Putin's presidency, Khodorkovsky managed to cultivate cordial relations with Russia's new president and was a frequent visitor to the Kremlin. Khodorkovsky even began to be mentioned as a potential future prime minister (although this story may have been confected by Khodorkovsky's media machine). But over time, and particularly as the Russian political class began to focus on the December 2003 Duma elections, while other oligarchs worked quietly backstage to ensure that their interests would continue to be represented in the new Duma, Khodorkovsky changed tack. He began to provide generous funding--directly and indirectly--for most or all of the parties likely to feature in the next Duma, particularly the two more liberal reformist, pro-market parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces.

Khodorkovsky's political activities now exceeded normal business lobbying and, to many observers, it seemed obvious that he was trying to build a foundation of support in the Duma with an eye toward a future in politics. Meanwhile, rumors began to circulate that Khodorkovsky was positioning himself to run for president in 2008, when, under the term limits established by Russia's constitution, Putin would have to leave office.

To Putin, this amounted to a clear challenge to his authority. Moreover, Khodorkovsky began to antagonize the president on a personal level, directly challenging his authority on a broad range of issues and even showing up at the Kremlin in casual attire for a meeting with the very formal Putin. Last July, the Kremlin loosed a clear warning shot by arresting his business partner, Platon Lebedev, on charges of fraud and tax evasion. Khodorkovsky himself was brought in for questioning. Perhaps persuaded that his position as CEO of Yukos and the strong international support he enjoyed offered him special protection, Khodorkovsky, instead of heeding that not-so-subtle hint, stepped up his political activities. Putin appears to have spent little time agonizing over an appropriate response. He evidently felt he needed to make an example of Khodorkovsky to reassert his authority, and on October 25, armed agents intercepted the Yukos chief at a Siberian airport and brought him back to Moscow in handcuffs.

Putin knew that Khodorkovsky's arrest on fraud, tax-evasion, and other charges, and its aftermath--the freezing of Khodorkovsky's equity stake in Yukos and the subsequent resignation of Chief of Staff Voloshin-- would shake international confidence and threaten Russia's two-year-long stock market boom. The Kremlin therefore immediately sought to limit the damage. Publicly and privately in his meetings with foreign and Russian bankers, Putin emphasized that the arrest was about the actions of one individual and not the start of a crusade against Russia's business interests.

In the wake of Voloshin's departure, many expected that the shadowy siloviki faction within the Kremlin--officials with backgrounds in law enforcement or in the KGB--would have the upper hand. Instead, Putin promoted two liberal-minded technocrats from St. Petersburg, Dmitri Med-vedev and Dmitri Kozak, to the top two positions on his staff, a clear signal to Russia's oligarchs, and to the West, that they could expect business to go on as usual. Medvedev wasted no time in acting on his mandate to calm the tense political situation, immediately issuing a statement criticizing the general prosecutor's office for being overzealous in its campaign against Khodorkovsky.

Thus far, Putin's efforts to restore investor confidence in the markets have met with only limited success. His assertion that the action against Khodorkovsky will not spill over into a broader campaign against private business has been largely accepted. But the incident has increased worries that the Russian reform process will turn sour. Not surprisingly, the Russian equity market, where Yukos Oil plays a major role, drifted into the doldrums in December, trading in a range of 15-20 percent below its peak prior to Khodorkovsky's arrest.

Within a week of his arrest, Khodorkovsky resigned as the CEO of Yukos, although he remains its main shareholder. He had already been planning for the succession at Yukos by appointing Simon Kukes chairman of the board. Kukes, Russian-born and a chemist by training, had become an American citizen after emigrating from Russia in the late 1970s. His r?sum? includes stints at Phillips Petroleum and Amoco as well as the Russian Tyumen Oil Company, or TNK, where he served as president from 1998 to 2003. At TNK, Kukes transformed an initially antagonistic relationship with British Petroleum into a landmark joint venture agreement announced in February 2003 that created Russia's first Western-Russian partnership, TNK-BP. Stepping aside from TNK after the merger, Kukes was approached by Khodorkovsky to join the Yukos board as his heir apparent. The leadership handoff came earlier than either expected.

With Kukes now at the helm of Yukos, the company may resume business as usual in early 2004. But in the short run, with Khodorkovsky's 39.5 percent of Yukos shares frozen by the government and the case against him still unresolved, any major equity deals with foreign companies (including ongoing discussions with Chevron-Texaco and ExxonMobil) are out of the question; even the merger with Sibneft, a nearly completed deal that would have created the world's fourth largest oil company, looks all but dead at the time of this writing.

With the uncertainty surrounding Khodorkovsky and Yukos front-page news, it is important to weigh fundamentals. And, in fact, not that much has changed. Russia remains the world's largest energy producer. Its economy is sound and its currency reserves are still growing. The all-important U.S.-Russia relationship--based on common interests with respect to security and counterterrorism--is strong. Russia's relations with the European Union and most of its neighbors are also good. Even in the neighboring Caucasus and Central Asia, where recent and pending leadership transitions raise fears that Moscow will stir up discontent to maintain a firm grip, the Kremlin's response has been one of restraint. All things considered, Russia still looks considerably more stable than worried international investors and volatile stock market prices would have us believe.

Putin and the Challenges Russia Faces
For the time being, President Putin is well positioned to contain the damaging fallout from the Khodorkovsky affair. Yet, as one hears in Moscow, there are other, more problematic, issues that could undermine Russian stability.

The first is the war in Chechnya. Beginning in 1994, Russia's military efforts to prevent the breakaway province from establishing its sovereignty have been a brutal and bloody affair. Tens of thousands of civilian casualties have resulted, and the war has generated significant terrorist activity in the North Caucasus, and throughout Russia. There are no prospects of meaningful negotiations between Moscow and Chechen representatives.

Chechen alienation from the Russian government is near complete, and the rebels' capacity to disrupt the Russian state is increasing. Chechen militants are responsible for the only known incident of radiological terror against a civilian population, having buried high-isotope cesium in Moscow's Ismailovsky Park in November 1995, with the intention of displaying to the Russian government the type of attack it should prepare for if their demands were not met. Russia has the world's largest concentration of unaccounted for radiological materials in its stockpiles, which could be put to use in explosive devices, and the Chechen resistance is becoming more and more technologically sophisticated. A successful "dirty bomb" attack in a major Russian city is an increasingly credible threat, and while this might not lead to significant casualties, the psychological and economic consequences would be immediate and devastating.

Moscow needs to address the Chechen issue, and a meaningful start could be made by instigating a widespread purge of Russian security forces in Chechnya to mitigate the worst human rights offenses being perpetrated there. While it is impossible to imagine any near-term negotiation that would satisfy both sides, efforts to build trust through improving the security and livelihood of Chechens would be a stabilizing first step. Beyond that, Moscow could benefit from coordinating its efforts more closely with the international community. Russia's willingness to cooperate with the United States in tracking down terrorists in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge is a welcome move, but it reflects only cooperation on the ground and falls far short of a meaningful solution to the problem.

The second issue is the brewing antagonism between China and Russia over influence in Siberia. Russia maintains complete political control over the resource-rich, India-sized expanse of its Far East and Siberia, but the economic balance is increasingly, and rapidly, tilting toward China. Indeed, local Russian leaders estimate that ethnic Chinese control nearly half of the Siberian economy. The demographic trends are striking: there are roughly 18 million Russians in Siberia, compared to over a quarter billion Chinese just across the border in China's northern provinces. And the internal balance is shifting, with Russians leaving the already sparsely populated region and (the largely illegal) Chinese migrants arriving in droves. The potential for interethnic violence is thus sure to grow. Local Russo-Chinese relations are increasingly dominating Siberia's elections and are likely to evolve into an issue that must be addressed directly by the Kremlin.

Not only is China exerting increasing economic influence over Siberia, the strongest demand for Russian energy comes from China. The potential exists for a synergistic and mutually beneficial relationship between Russia and China, based on the energy resources of eastern Siberia. From Russia's point of view, this is a region with massive hydrocarbon potential, but one that is remote from potential markets. For China, importing hydrocarbons from eastern Siberia would have a clear strategic benefit, as they would be delivered via overland pipelines. This would reduce China's dependence on seaborne imports, which the Chinese military considers insecure. But there is a conflict brewing over Siberia--this being demonstrated by the way the Kremlin has danced around approval for a pipeline deal that would transport oil from Angarsk in eastern Siberia to refineries in the Chinese city of Daqing. Moscow is concerned about placing the future of Siberian energy exports in the hands of a single country. Instead, the government is considering a much longer pipeline, technically more difficult and more than twice as expensive to build, to the eastern port of Nakhodka, which would allow Russia to export to the global markets.

Putin must be willing to tackle the simmering conflict over Siberia head on with the Chinese government. He must also be ready to address these issues constructively, and at the highest levels, with local Russian leaders, rather than allowing them to take matters into their own hands, which will inexorably lead to deep political conflict.

Finally, the third, and potentially most destabilizing, issue facing Putin is democratic reform. What happens when Putin has consolidated power and carried out the many components of his economic reform package--when the controversial dislocations from energy reform are at an end and WTO accession is fully at hand? Will he then be willing to start spending some of his political capital in order to create a truly representative political system with legitimacy invested in durable democratic institutions rather than in the person of the president?

This is undoubtedly the key question. The important Russian presidential elections will not be those held this coming March, the results of which are a foregone conclusion, but those scheduled for 2008. According to the Russian constitution, Putin is not permitted to run for a third term. He has repeatedly and publicly said that he has no intention of standing for election a third time. But in 2008, the Russian president will be only 56 years old, a virtual sapling compared to his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Members of Putin's cabinet will no doubt be clamoring for him to stay on for reasons of self-interest. Large segments of the public may also wish him to do so.

Were Putin to subvert the constitution in an attempt to stay in power past 2008, it would be a disaster for Russia's democratic hopes. If Russia can maintain its economic growth for the next five years, and if President Putin has ended the threats to central state control from Russia's oligarchs and local leaders, there will be no reason for him to deny Russians the ability to make their own political and economic choices. At some point in a country's development, democracy and prosperity become mutually reinforcing and the absence of democracy becomes an obstacle to economic growth and popular well-being. Whether Putin will be able to act the democrat after close to a decade as a near autocrat remains an open question.

The Khodorkovsky affair has once again led many Western analysts and policymakers to adopt a pessimistic view of Russia. But if we have learned anything in the last decade, it is that this pessimism could dissipate surprisingly quickly. When it comes to Russia, the roller coaster of opinion has everything to do with perceptions of the moment and very little to do with underlying reality.

Much depends on Vladimir Putin. So far, he has handled his job well, or at least well enough. His commitment to economic reform has by and large been exemplary, and his commitment to political consolidation and reasserting central authority has not-- yet--assumed a dictatorial form. The Khodorkovsky affair is worrisome, but on balance, it still looks to be the exception to the rule.

Putin has four more years to show Russia and the world who he really is. He will face serious challenges--in Chechnya and in China--and the Russian economy will be hard-pressed to sustain the dramatic growth of recent years. But ultimately, the greatest threat to Putin's legacy remains Putin himself. If, in 2008, he does indeed step down, Russia and the world will breathe a sigh of relief and thank him for his leadership. If he does not, all his positive achievements may amount to little more than a prelude to authoritarian rule and decline.

--December 26, 2003

*Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, and a columnist for the Financial Times.

>> BUGGING KOFI...
http://www.theworld.org/latesteditions/20040226.shtml
UN History (6:00)
The discovery that the United States spied on the United Nations in the run up to the war seems shocking, but should it be? Host Marco Werman speaks with Burton Hersh, who writes about the history of spying in fiction and non-fiction.


A New Job for Kay
Let him investigate the U.N. Oil-for-Food scam.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
When David Kay recovers from his weapons hunt, there's another Iraq-related quest I'd like to send him on. It's time a top intelligence team went scavenging for the real numbers on the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Program--that gigantic setup through which the U.N. from 1996 through 2003 supervised more than $100 billion worth of Saddam Hussein's selling of oil and buying of goods.
And, no, I am not talking about anything as exotic as the list of alleged bribe-takers from Saddam Hussein, published Jan. 25 by the Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada, and now under investigation. I speak simply about the U.N.-supplied numbers on Oil-for-Food's operations. Over the past 18 months, I have periodically tried to get these figures to add up. I am starting to believe the words of an unusually forthright U.N. spokesman, who at one point told me, "They won't."
Basic integrity in bookkeeping seems little enough to ask of the U.N., where officials defending Oil-for-Food have been insisting that it wasn't their fault if Saddam was corrupt. They just did the job of meticulously recording the deals now beset by graft allegations, approving the contracts, and making sure the necessary funds went in and out of the U.N.-held escrow accounts. I'm sure there was some sort of logic to it. Though I have begun to wonder if maybe the same way the U.N. has its own arrangements for postal services and tax-exempt salaries, U.N. accounting has its own special system of arithmetic.
It all added up fairly neatly, of course, in the summary offered by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, when the U.N. turned over the remnants of Oil-for-Food to the Coalition Provisional Authority in November. Oil-for-Food, said Mr. Annan, had presided over $65 billion worth of Saddam's oil sales and in buying relief supplies had used "some $46 billion of Iraqi export earnings on behalf of the Iraqi people." (Keep your eye on those numbers.) In doing so, the U.N. secretariat had collected a 2.2% commission on the oil, which, even after a portion was refunded for relief operations, netted out to more than $1 billion for U.N. administrative overhead. The U.N. also collected a 0.8% commission to pay for weapons inspections in Iraq--including when Saddam shut them out between 1998 and 2002--which comes to another $520 million or so.
The keen observer will see that this adds up to payouts of just under $48 billion from Saddam's Oil-for-Food proceeds, which is about $17 billion less than what he took in. The difference is explained--near enough--by the $17.5 billion paid out of the same Oil-for-Food stream of Saddam's oil revenues but dispensed, under another part of the U.N. Iraq program, by the U.N. Compensation Commission to victims of Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. That gives us a grand total of $65 billion earned, and about $65 billion allocated for payments, all very tidy.
Except the U.N. Compensation Commission states on its Web site that oil sales under Oil-for-Food totaled not Mr. Annan's $65 billion, but "more than US$70 billion"--a $5 billion discrepancy in U.N. figures. A phone call to the UNCC, based in Geneva, doesn't clear up much. A spokesman there says the oil total comes from the U.N. in New York, and adds, helpfully, "Maybe it was an approximate figure, just rounded up."
OK, but in some quarters, if not at the U.N., $5 billion here or there is big money. Halliburton has been pilloried, and rightly so, over questions involving less than 1% of such amounts. One turns for explanation to the U.N. headquarters in New York, where a spokesman confirms that though the U.N. program ended last November, the former executive director of Oil-for-Food, Benon Sevan, is still on contract, still drawing a salary, but Mr. Sevan's secretary explains he is "not giving interviews anymore." The spokesman, also still on salary, answers all requests for clarification with "I don't know," and "You have the Web site."
All right. The Web site brings us a U.N. update issued Nov. 21, 2003, when the U.N. turned over the program to the CPA, which tells us that $31 billion worth of supplies and equipment had been delivered to Iraq, with another $8.2 billion in the pipeline. That comes to $39.2 billion. Again, even if you add in, say, $2 billion for U.N. commissions, that's still about $5 billion short of the $46 billion Mr. Annan says was used for supplies--which might make sense if the program at the end had been swimming in loose cash, except that Mr. Sevan was lamenting toward the end that there was not enough money to fund all the supply contracts he'd already approved.
Returning to the U.N. Web site, nothing there discloses the amount of interest paid during the course of the program on the Oil-for-Food escrow accounts. That should have been substantial, because these U.N.-managed Iraq accounts in the final phases of the program held balances of about $12 billion. Or so we've been told. I first got that number by phoning the U.N. back in September 2002. That was well before Mr. Sevan stopped giving interviews, and I spoke with Mr. Sevan himself. He told me the Oil-for-Food accounts at that point contained balances of about $20 billion. The next day, someone in his office revised that down to about $15 billion. Later that afternoon, someone in the U.N. controller's office revised that down to $9 billion. When I protested that these discrepancies were getting large, we ended up haggling over the phone for a while, and finally settled on an official total of about $12 billion in the Oil-for-Food accounts.
I'm still not sure what to believe, however, given that the U.N. treasurer, Suzanne Bishopric, assured me at the same time, in September 2002, and again in early 2003, that the accounts had been diversified among "five or six" banks, and to date we have still heard mention of only one--a French bank, BNP Paribas. So, in some fit of arithmetic absent-mindedness, did Ms. Bishopric lose track of the number of banks, confusing one with five or six?
It's a little hard to know whether oil sales were actually $65 billion or $70 billion, whether there were five or six banks or just one, whether at least that one bank, BNP, ever paid significant interest on balances that toward the end of the program totaled $20 billion or $15 billion or $9 billion or $12 billion, and whether humanitarian import contracts were funded to the tune of $39.2 billion or $46 billion. Mr. Annan assures us the program has been audited many times, even if it was done in confidence, in-house, backed up by member nations that may have had their own interests to consider, such as one of Saddam's favorite trading partners, France.
If you want to get fancy, you can factor in the allegations that Saddam underbilled for oil and overpaid for goods via the U.N. contracts, in order to piggyback bribes and kickbacks atop the Oil-for-Food program. If true, then the two things we can bank on are that Saddam took in more than the U.N. reported, and the goods the Iraqi people received were worth less.
Which brings us back to Mr. Kay, who in reference to Oil-for-Food noted recently that "a lot of people took part in what was clearly a scam." I start to wonder whether Mr. Kay, given full powers to investigate, might return to report that whatever the U.N. may be reporting, we still don't have a clue about the real numbers.
Ms. Rosett is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.


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Pakistan and the Hunt for Osama bin Laden listen
Pakistan has not done enough to hunt down Taliban and al Qaeda militants along the rugged Afghan frontier. Now, Pakistan is beginning a "spring offensive," and high-ranking American officers are sounding confident that Osama bin Laden may be killed or captured before the end of the year. But much depends on Pakistan's President General Musharraf, who's been the target of assassination attempts. Can Musharraf survive an effort to root out Islamic radicals? What's the role of American Special Forces? Are they spread too thin? What would the end of bin Laden mean for the war on terror? We hear from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in the US, the editor of a national Pakistani newspaper, a military analyst and a former State Department official.

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Capture of Al-Zawahri's son unconfirmed
Wednesday 25 February 2004, 15:24 Makka Time, 12:24 GMT
Pakistani officials have refused to comment on reports that the son of Ayman al-Zawahri, a close associate of Usama bin Ladin, is among a group of al-Qaida suspects captured on the Afghan border.
The Taliban and al-Qaida suspects were arrested on Tuesday after hundreds of Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships swooped down on a town in the semi-autonomous South Waziristan tribal region.
The Urdu-language Jang daily, quoting diplomatic sources, said al-Zawahri's son Khalid, was handed over to US custody soon after his arrest and flown out of Pakistan.
"The identities and nationalities of the suspects would be known when interrogation is over," a security official said.
The arrest, if confirmed, would be a major boost to US-led efforts to track down bin Ladin, the alleged architect of the September 11 attacks.
No information
Ayman al-Zawahiri, number two in al-Qaida network, threatened new attacks against the US in a recording attributed to him by Al-Jazeera television channel on Tuesday.
US military spokesman in Kabul said they did not have any information on arrests from the operation carried out by Pakistani authorities in the tribal region.
"We don't have any reports coming out of Pakistan in reference to who they picked up, at least I haven't seen anything yet," Lieutenant Colonel Matt Beevers said.
"The identities and nationalities of the suspects would be known when interrogation is over"
Unidentified Pakistani
security official
"Clearly coalition forces support the Pakistani army's efforts in the federally-administered tribal areas. They continue to do an outstanding job," he said.
Intelligence officials revealed that foreign women were among the detainees, but declined to release any more details.
"Among the men how many are foreigners I cannot comment," military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said.
Pakistan had dismissed speculation that Tuesday's border operation targeted bin Ladin, after reports that his location had been pinpointed on a different stretch of the Afghanistan border.
South Waziristan has long been considered a sanctuary for Taliban and Al-Qaida members who fled Afghanistan in late 2001 when US-led forces invaded and ousted the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
Tens of thousands of Pakistani troops have been deployed along the 1600km border for the last two years and Islamabad says it has arrested more than 500 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects.

AFP
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Interrogators squash report on arrest of Zawahiri's son
Islamabad |By Shahid Hussain | 26-02-2004
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While interrogators are questioning more than 20 terrorist suspects arrested from a rugged tribal area on the Afghanistan border, the government yesterday dismissed speculation a son of top Al Qaida leader Ayman Al Zawahiri was among the captured lot.
"It is wild speculation," Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan told a press briefing when asked whether a son, two daughters and wife of Osama bin Laden's deputy had been taken into custody.
The spokesman said investigation was under way to determine the nationalities of the men and some women taken into custody during a military operation on Tuesday in South Waziristan Agency, located about 300 km west of Islamabad.
A senior official, who did not want to be named, said that the men rounded up in South Waziristan did not include any important Al Qaida figure.
The Urdu newspaper Jang said in a report yesterday that a son of Al Zawahiri, whom it identified as Khalid, had been captured.
The report, quoting diplomatic sources, said Khalid had been handed to US custody and flown out of Pakistan. According to security sources the interrogators were trying to find clues from the arrested people about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his companions.
The operation in the area, which has been under the spotlight as a sanctuary for fugitives from across the border, came after the expiry of a deadline that authorities had set for voluntary surrender by terrorist elements and their local supporters.
"The deadline was not met," the Foreign Office spokesman said, emphasising that the Pakistani forces were engaged in locating and neutralising any terrorist elements hiding in the tribal territory.
"We want to flush out all terrorists and eliminate the terrorist threat."
The military's public relations department has confirmed in a statement that some foreign women were among those arrested in Tuesday's operation.
The statement said the women were taken into custody by female police and were being treated "with due respect".
It also said some houses belonging to those who harbour terrorist elements were demolished in accordance with the established local customs and laws in the tribal territory.
Political authorities in South Waziristan have been pursuing a carrot-and-stick strategy to persuade tribal elders to apprehend foreigners and their harbourers and hand them over to the administration.
Dozens of local tribesmen were turned over to the authorities in recent weeks but many more on the list of those wanted for sheltering foreign elements were still at large, officials said.

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Three women suspects handed over to tribal elders
Islamabad, Feb 26 (DPA) Pakistani authorities have handed over to tribal elders three foreign women who were among 25 suspects captured in a major military operation Tuesday in South Waziristan region, officials said today.
''We handed them (arrested women) over to tribal elders after they insisted upon it because the detention of females is considered odd in the tribal customs,'' Rehmatullah Wazir, deputy administrator of the region, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa today.
However, he made it clear that the tribal elders would be responsible for them and would ensure their appearance before the investigators when it was required. Wazir did not reveal the nationalities of the females nor their relations to their male companions.
During a day-long swoop in South Waziristan Agency, Pakistan's army nabbed five foreign suspects along with 20 locals. Soldiers also demolished a few houses belonging to those suspected of harbouring foreign militants.
A media report had said that a son of Ayman al-Zawahiri, a kingpin of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network, was also detained in the operation. However, Pakistani officials had described that as ''wild speculation''.
South Waziristan is one of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous regions - each called agencies - that snake along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistan's latest operation coincided with a weekend ''swoop'' launched by US and Afghan troops in southern and eastern parts of the country near North Waziristan Agency.
The renewed searches on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border came amid reported claims by Taliban members that Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Taliban Chief Mullah Omar, were still alive in Afghanistan.
Pakistan, a key ally to the United States in its war on terror in Afghanistan, has handed over more than 500 Taliban and al-Qaeda fugitives to the US since the fall of the radical Taliban regime in late 2001.


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Reported Capture of Zawahiri's Son and Its Implications
Posted by Ross on Wednesday February 25, 2004 at 5:48 am MST [ Send Story to Friend ]
One of Pakistan's leading newspapers, the Urdu-language Jang, is reporting that a son of Ayman Zawahiri has been captured. The paper cites unnamed diplomatic sources. US officials have not confirmed the report. His daughters and wife apparently were previously killed. The report comes the same day as a Zawahiri tape makes threats of new attacks against the United States. The tape urges President Bush to prepare for new attacks on the US homeland. Coincidentally, CIA Director George Tenet testified yesterday before the Senate Intelligence Committee that `We see al-Qaeda's program to produce anthrax as one of the most immediate'" threats. While we wait to receive confirmation that his son was captured -- and who even knew he had a son -- it is worth revisiting what is known about Ayman.
Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli, a Senior Analyst of MEMRI's Middle East Economic Studies Program, published a very helpful description of Zawahiri's background in the journal "Terrorism and Political Violence." There was also a fascinating cover story by Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker, in the issue dated September 16, 2002. Given the importance of knowing your enemy, walk in his shoes and come to know the man. It's part of what is known as "Red Teaming."
Al-Zawahiri's family has its roots in a small town in Saudi Arabia "where the first battle between Prophet Muhammad and the infidels was fought and won by the Prophet." Indeed, with 9/11 and the anthrax mailings, he essentially is seeking to recreate the taking of Mecca by a small band. Al-Zawahiri's great grandfather came to the Nile Delta in the 1860s to a city where there is a mosque that still bears his name. His father, who was a professor of pharmacology at Ein Shams University, passed away in 1995. His grandfather on his mother's side was president of Cairo University and the Egyptian ambassador to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. He was known for being pious and nicknamed "the devout ambassador." Two of his sisters are on the faculty at Cairo University Medical School. His uncle was the Dean of Cairo's medical school at one point. Including in-laws, he has 40 doctors of various sorts in his family.
Born June 1, 1951, he grew up in Cairo's Al-Ma'adi neighborhood. He graduated cum laude from Cairo University's medical school in 1974 with an MD degree. He received a master's degree in surgery in 1978 and was married the next year to to Izzat Ahmad Nuwair who had graduated with a degree in philosophy from Cairo University. His wife and children were killed in a bombing raid in Afghanistan and an obituary mourning their loss appeared in Cairo. He has a younger brother Hassan, an engineer, and had an older brother Muhammad. (Muhammad, was in Al Qaeda until being extradited to Egypt and executed pursuant to a death sentence imposed in the "Albanian returnees" case; Hassan was once extradited but released). Without his family, Zawahiri is a now a fanatic guided only by his faith and his literal interpretation of a book written many years ago.
In his youth, Zawahiri was influenced by Sayyid Qutb, one of the spiritual leaders of Islamic religious groups. After a two year stay in the United States where he gained a contempt for American culture, the secular writer Qutb returned to his religious roots and wrote extensively supporting violence against Christians and Jews, and even muslim leaders deemed infidel. Zawahiri traces the origin of the modern islamist movement to the hanging of Qutb in 1966. After joining a cell in 1974 at the age of 16, and then becoming its leader, he formed a military wing under the guidance of Al-Qamari, an Egyptian army officer. Known for their extreme secrecy, "[t]o aid their secrecy the group avoided growing beards like most Islamists, and hence they were known as "the shaven beards." It would remain his tactic to recruit members of the Egyptian army because of their training and expertise. In his book, Al-Zawahiri as I Knew Him, Attorney Al-Zayyat maintains that after his arrest in connection with the murder of President Sadat, Al-Zawahiri was tortured by the Egyptian police, and disclosed where his close friend and ally Al-Qamari was hiding. Zawahiri has burned with bitterness over the humiliation ever since. In the long run, torture merely leads to more terrorism.
During the 1975-1979, radical but not revolutionary study groups spread quickly through the Cairo, Ayn Shams and al-Azhar universities and elsewhere. Al-Jihad began as such a student organization. The student groups were one of the main targets of Sadat's crackdown in 1979. Hundreds were arrested and their campus groups dissolved. The revolutionary ideas of Qutb that influenced these student groups, which were known as jam'iyat. Courses of study in Egyptian universities are narrow, preventing many from acquiring a liberal education as they acquire technical skills. Thus, many fundamentalists are highly educated in technical fields yet do not have a broader educational background. Life as a student in Egypt is hard and job prospects are poor. In the late 1970s, an estimated 85% of al-Jihad's members were students.
In 1979, while working at the Muslim Brotherhood Al Sayyeda Zaynab clinic, Al-Zawahiri was asked if he wanted to go Afghanistan and he jumped at the opportunity. Even then, Afghanistan represented a possible secure base from which to wage jihad. He would later write: "It is as if 100 years were added to my life when I came to Afghanistan." He spent 4 months in Peshawar, Pakistan.
300 al-Jihad activists were arrested after Sadat's assassination. Almost all of those arrested were between the ages of 20 and 28 and most were medical, law or pharmacy students at either the Universities of Asyut or al-Minya. Of those prosecuted for Sadat's assassination, five were sentenced to life, twelve were given long prison terms and two were acquitted, including the blind shiek, who had purported to authorize the assassination on the basis of Islamic doctrine.
Zawahiri was imprisoned for a few years after Sadat's assassination in 1981 and allegedly tortured. "They don't seem to understand the cult of pain they're creating," al-Zayat has said. After being released from prison in 1984, he went to Saudi Arabia in 1986, returning to Pakistan by the next year. This time he worked as a surgeon for the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Hospital, which years later would be his cover when he traveled in the United States under the alias Moaz. In the late 1980s, there was a dispute in Peshawar between followers of the Egyptian Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Accused of misappropriating funds, Zawahiri was cutoff from aid by Saudi Arabia and turned to Iran instead.
When Bin Laden's spiritual leader Azzam was assassinated, al-Zawahiri assumed the role. Zawahiri's philosophy is decidely anti-democratic. He thinks democracy must be overcome through violence. He knows best based on words written many years before. Although soft-spoken and outwardly calm, he is a fanatic. The humiliation he felt upon betraying al-Qamari still rages within him. He is not constrained by what most would view as ethical limits. Beware the quiet, deep thinker who thinks he knows best, particularly after you've killed his wife and children. In Bitter Harvest, he was very critical of the Muslim Brotherhood for its growing accommodation of secular rulers, though he softened his views somewhat in Prophets under the Banner.
In the mid-1990s, Al-Zawahiri sought to coordinate the activities of the various Islamic terrorist movements to carry out sabotage activities against the United States. A series of meetings included representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah. In a meeting held in Khartoum in April 1995, one direction Al-Zawahiri charted was to develop the effectiveness of the Islamic networks in London and New York, especially Brooklyn. The representatives agreed that Al-Zawahiri should visit the U.S. to see first hand the modus operandi of the Islamic networks there.
What does his son -- if he indeed had a son Khalid who was captured -- know about Zawahiri's decade long quest to weaponize anthrax for use against US targets?
Those that say that the "known facts" do not point to Al Qaeda as responsible for the anthrax attacks do not know the facts known by Khalid.
CIA Director Tenet, in contrast, may know Al Qaeda is responsible but wisely be following the advice of Lao-Tzu: "To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty."


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Iran denies engagement in P2 nuclear centrifuge research
www.chinaview.cn 2004-02-26 16:17:57
TEHRAN, Feb. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran said Wednesday that it is unnecessary to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) outcome of its research on centrifuge P2, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The IRNA quoted Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rowhani as saying that Tehran does not have the centrifuge,and was only conducting related research or designing a prototype.
Rowhani was responding to an IAEA report issued Tuesday that indicated the discovery of an advanced P2 centrifuge that Iran could use to enrich uranium for a weapon.
The report, however, said Iran has agreed to suspend its enrichment and centrifuge testing program.
"Iran is engaged in other types of research but has not reported to the IAEA and does not deem it necessary to report to the UN," the IRNA quoted Rowhani as saying.
Also on Wednesday, Iran responded to the reported finding in Iran by the IAEA of traces of polonium-210, a radioactive element that can help trigger a nuclear chain reaction.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Hamid-Reza Asefi described it as a misunderstanding that "will be verified by the agency in the near future."
In a related development, the US envoy to the IAEA, Kenneth Brill, said Iran needs to demonstrate to the IAEA and international community that it has totally given up the nuclear program other than for civilian use.
IAEA board of directors is expected to discuss the report on Mar. 8 to decide whether Iran has kept its commitment related to the nuclear issue. Enditem
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Justice on trial

Feb 26th 2004 | THE HAGUE
From The Economist print edition
The long, slow trial of Slobodan Milosevic, former Yugoslav president, is raising questions about international courts
IT HAS been neither as short nor as salutary as believers in international justice had hoped. Moreover, the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, ex-president of Yugoslavia, has run into many practical snags. This week, just as the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was preparing, at long last, to wind up its case, the 62-year-old defendant, whose illness had already interrupted proceedings a dozen times, fell ill yet again. And the presiding judge, Britain's Richard May, announced that he was to step down, also for health reasons.
The tribunal's American head, Theodor Meron, says that Mr May's departure should "not have an unduly disruptive effect on any proceedings". But Mr Milosevic may now be able to demand a retrial. And that could conceivably mean abandoning two years' worth of hearings, involving nearly 300 witnesses and 30,000 pages of evidence.
Under the ICTY's rules, a replacement judge can be appointed if one of the three-judge panel dies or resigns in mid-trial. So Mr Meron could order the continuation of proceedings--but only if the defendant agrees. If Mr Milosevic, who has always refused to recognise the authority of the court anyway, will not agree, the two remaining judges could still decide to continue the trial if it would "serve the interests of justice". They probably will. But Mr Milosevic would have a right of appeal, causing yet more cost and delay.
Charged with 66 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, Mr Milosevic is the first head of state since the second world war to have to answer for such atrocities. At the trial's opening, Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, declared that it was "the most powerful demonstration that no one is above the law." Human-rights groups predicted that it would set a "new benchmark". Nobody wants to throw all that away, especially at a time when the very concept of international justice is under fire.
The ICTY, set up in The Hague in 1993, was the first international court of its kind since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after the second world war. In the years since, ad hoc war-crimes tribunals have been set up for Rwanda, East Timor, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Cambodia. Hopes were high that they, together with a new permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, would end any notion of impunity for the chief perpetrators of atrocities--and so help to deter future ones.
But as the proceedings have lengthened and the costs have risen, disillusion has set in. The long American campaign against the ICC (not to be confused with the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague) has not helped. Last August, the UN imposed a "completion strategy" on both the Yugoslav and the Rwandan tribunals, requiring them to end all trials by 2008 and appeals by 2010. Financing (some $120m for the ICTY this year alone) will then cease.
Some criticisms of the ICTY are justified. All pioneers make mistakes, and the Yugoslav tribunal is no exception. But other shortcomings are inherent to international courts. The ICTY has had to harmonise different legal traditions, cope with multiple languages (of judges, lawyers, perpetrators and victims), and translate mountains of documents. Most of the cases before it are hugely complex, involving dozens of charges and hundreds of witnesses. Those convicted have a right of appeal against both conviction and sentence, which they always seem to exercise.
Evidence for war crimes is generally hard to come by, and suspects can be more elusive still. International tribunals do not have police powers: they cannot send in sheriffs to make arrests. They rely on the co-operation of foreign governments, which is not always forthcoming. The ICTY was lucky to have NATO and UN forces in Bosnia to help. But 20 of its chief suspects are still on the run, including Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, and Ratko Mladic, the general who allegedly organised the massacre of 7,500 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995. Mrs del Ponte has accused Serbia of giving these suspects a "safe haven", and of failing to hand over vital evidence.
Based in The Hague, operating only under international law, and with no judges from former Yugoslavia, the ICTY has been criticised for its distance from the scene of the crimes, for making victims feel irrelevant and for leading the Serbs, who make up the great majority of defendants, to talk of "victors' justice". Some even blame the court for the nationalists' revival in Serbia--both Mr Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj, a radical nationalist awaiting trial in The Hague, played a part in the elections in December and the political manoeuvring since (see article).
But the ICTY deserves praise as well as criticism. After an admittedly slow and shaky start, it has streamlined its operations and scored some notable successes. Between four and six trials are now being held in shifts every day, in the tribunal's three chambers. Of the 94 accused who have so far appeared before the court, half have been convicted, including Milan Babic, the former Croatian Serb leader. Eight are still on trial, including Momcilo Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb leader accused of masterminding the Serbs' ethnic-cleansing campaign--the darkest chapter in a war that left some 100,000 Bosnians dead and forced a further 2m from their homes. Another 25 await trial; five have died after being charged; and five have had their charges withdrawn. Only five have so far been acquitted.
The prosecution has now agreed to rest its case forthwith, forgoing two days that had been allocated to it. The court has suspended its hearings until June 8th, so as to allow Mr Milosevic the extra time that he had requested to prepare his defence. This will also give time for a substitute judge for Mr May to get abreast of the proceedings. The court has given Mr Milosevic 150 days to complete his defence. Given a rhythm, on doctor's orders, of around three court days a week, proceedings could last well into 2006.
Will Mr Milosevic agree to a simple continuation of the trial? Officials suggest he has nothing to gain by prolonging things. But if he faces a life sentence anyway, he has nothing to lose either. More grandstanding on a public podium may be far more appealing than rotting quietly in a prison cell for the rest of his days.

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Yasser's Suicide Bombers
By HonestReporting.com
HonestReporting.com | February 26, 2004
On Feb.22 a suicide bomber on a Jerusalem bus killed 8 Israelis ? including two teenagers on their way to school ? and injured over 60.
The attack was perpetrated by a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. While it is generally accepted that this terrorist group is connected to Yassir Arafat's Fatah party, most major news agencies continued to downplay that relationship in today's reports:
? Associated Press: "The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group loosely affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack and identified the bomber as Mohammed Zool, 23, from the village of Hussan near Bethlehem."
? Washington Post: "Hezbollah television station Al-Manar reported that the bombing was carried out by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant group that associates itself with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement..."
? CNN: "The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades ? the military offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement ? claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement."
? Agence France Presse: "The bombing, claimed by the radical Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement..."
DIRECT CONNECTION
The evidence, however, clearly indicates that the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade is not some "loose offshoot," but rather has a direct and ongoing bond to the Fatah party, which holds a majority of seats in the Palestinian Parliament. The Palestinian government, therefore, bears direct responsibility for the group's heinous terrorist acts:
▪ In November, 2003 a BBC investigation found that up to $50,000 a month was funneled by Fatah directly to the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. When BBC reported on today's attack, their terminology was consistent with these findings ? unlike the outlets above, BBC described the relationship between Fatah and the terrorists in an entirely accurate manner:
The militant al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, has claimed responsibility for the suicide attack.
▪ Documents captured by the IDF in 2002 indicated Fatah's "systematic, institutionalized and ongoing financing" of the Al Aqsa Brigades, including a special allocation to the Bethlehem branch of the organization (the very group that dispatched today's bomber). After inspecting these documents, President Bush called for Arafat's removal in June, 2002.
▪ The leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Tulkarm told USA Today on March 14, 2002: "The truth is, we are Fatah, but we didn't operate under the name of Fatah...We are the armed wing of the organization. We receive our instructions from Fatah. Our commander is Yasser Arafat himself."
▪ Last week, British MP Jenny Tonge went to visit Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades' Bethlehem branch. BBC's Radio 4 carried a report in which the terrorists themselves admit they are "part of Fatah...the militant part." (Click here to hear the report ? the statement regarding Fatah is about 2:50 in.)
HonestReporting calls on other media outlets to follow the BBC's lead and specify the integral connection between Fatah and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM
High school students mourning a classmate
This is not merely a semantic matter. The close ties that bond the Fatah-led PA to terrorist groups are the fundamental problem that prevents progress toward peaceful reconciliation. The dominant political party in the PA remains a direct sponsor of ongoing terrorism ? the ruling politicians and the terrorists are one and the same.
If media outlets fail to convey this, their readers and viewers certainly can't understand Israel's position in the raging debate over the security fence, which tomorrow reaches the world court at The Hague.
One paper that clearly doesn't "get it" is The Chicago Tribune, which published today three op-eds (1,2,3) railing against the security fence, all under the theme "Build Bridges, Not Walls."
Israel has been attempting to build bridges with her Palestinian neighbors for over fifty years. But as a terror-free Palestinian leadership has never emerged, and Israeli families continue to be torn apart by senseless terrorist murder, no other option currently exists. Until there's a Palestinian partner who forsakes terrorism, Israeli citizens deserve the protection of an imperfect wall.
In reporting on today's attack, did your local paper indicate the direct connections between the perpetrators of the horrific attack and Yassir Arafat's ruling Fatah party? If not, write a letter to the editor, using the talking points above, and stressing the significance of accuracy on this particular issue ? which cuts to the heart of the entire conflict.

Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media bias.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maple Leaf Terror
By Stephen Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 26, 2004
An American courtroom just witnessed the first conviction ever of a Canadian citizen in the War on Terror.
Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, 21, originally from Kuwait, pleaded guilty to several charges of planning attacks against American interests outside the United States. The charges include conspiracy to kill US nationals, destroy US property abroad with weapons of mass destruction, kill American employees while on duty, and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. The WMD, in this case, was dynamite. According to Canadian newspapers, Jabarah was tried secretly at an undisclosed location in New York state.
Jabarah came to Canada with his family at age 12 and attended a Catholic high school in St. Catherines, Ontario. However, he returned summers to his native Kuwait where he and his older brother fell under the influence of Muslim extremists. After high school, the Canadian Islamist went to
Afghanistan, where he underwent guerrilla and explosives training at an al-Qaeda camp, rising up in the terrorist organization due to his proficiency in English and his Canadian passport. Jabarah eventually became a member of Osama bin Laden's bodyguard unit, coming into frequent contact with the al-Qaeda leader.
The day before 9/11, the Canadian terrorist, whose code name was "Sammy", was given $10,000 and sent to Southeast Asia to liaison with Islamist terrorist groups there and to organize strikes of his own. He is known to have met with Hambali, the mastermind of the Bali bombing in Indonesia, and is believed to have had a role in its planning. Jabarah himself became the ringleader of a plot to blow up Western embassies in Singapore with truck bombs.
Fortunately, the plot was uncovered in time, causing Jabarah to flee to Oman, a Persian Gulf state. Arrested there, he was returned to Canada, where, after a meeting with Canadian intelligence officials, he was persuaded to walk across the border at Niagara Falls to talk with American authorities. The Americans, happy to have such a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative walk into their arms, spirited their intelligence find away to a secret location, presumably a military facility in Brooklyn, New York.
While in American custody, Jabarah's older brother, Abdul Rahman, continued to carry the family flag in the sick and twisted world of Islamist terrorism. Last May, he and 18 other al-Qaeda Islamists fought a gun battle with security forces in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda then struck one week later with suicide truck bombers who killed 34 people and wounded hundreds more in housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital. However, the older Jabarah's career path as Islamist terrorist was cut short last July when Saudi authorities killed him.
Unfortunately, the younger Jabarah was not the only Canadian Islamist on trial in the United States this month. Mohammed Warasame, 30, a Somali-Canadian, is facing a charge in a Minnesota courtroom of providing support to a terrorist organization. According to an FBI affidavit, Warasame, a former Toronto resident, wired money to people he met in Taliban training camps in Afghanistan where he taught English to al-Qaeda members and saw combat in a Taliban military unit. He once sat next to Osama bin Laden at a meal and had asked the al-Qaeda leader for money to move his family to Afghanistan. Instead, bin Laden, whom Warasame described in the affidavit as "very inspirational", gave him an airplane ticket back to North America and $1,700 in traveling money.
Moreover, another Canadian citizen returned recently from a stint as a guest of the US government in Guantanamo Bay. Abdurahman Khadr, 21, a Toronto resident whose family comes from Egypt, had trained at a Taliban camp in Afghanistan, where he fell into American hands. Khadr has the dubious honor of belonging to Canada's first family of terrorism. His younger brother, Omar, is still interned in Guantanamo Bay, charged with killing an American soldier with a grenade in a firefight in Afghanistan. Khadr's father, Ahmed Said, was killed in a shootout with security forces in Pakistan last fall, while still another brother, 14-year-old Abdul, was wounded in the same fight and now lies paralyzed in a Pakistani hospital. Only the oldest Khadr son, Abdullah, who once ran a Taliban training camp, is still at large.
Opportunely, a US Library of Congress report also appeared this month in Canadian papers, accusing Canada of becoming a haven for Islamist terrorists and a liability in the War on Terror. Called 'The Nations Hospitable to Organized Crime and Terrorism', the document, compiled last fall by the US Congress's research division and the Central Intelligence Agency's Crime and Narcotics Center, takes America's northern neighbor to task for its loose security environment. The report blames Canada's "...generous social welfare system, lax immigration laws, infrequent prosecutions, light sentencing, and long borders...", among other factors, for making it a favorite destination for terrorist and criminal groups, which are "increasingly using Canada as an operational base and transit country en route to the United States."
While these findings are nothing new, as US governors, intelligence officials and Canadian conservatives have constantly pointed them out, their results continue to emerge in American courtrooms and, it appears, will unfortunately do so for the foreseeable future.

Stephen Brown is a journalist based in Toronto. He has an M.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies. Email him at alsolzh@hotmail.com.
------------------------------------------------------------------------


EU, US trumpet 'win-win' accord in satellites row
26 February 2004
European Union and US officials trumpetted Thursday a "win-win" accord resolving a transatlantic row over rival satellite systems, saying it will create a new world standard of radio-navigation.
The two sides said they hope to clear up final details of an accord on Europe's planned Galileo satellite system in time for an EU-US summit in Ireland in June, to be attended by US President George W. Bush.
The agreement on all but a few "legal and procedural" issues was struck Wednesday after two days of talks, following previous negotiating rounds in the Netherlands and Washington which had failed to make headway.
"All in all we have achieved what was always our objective, a win-win outcome. We still have some details to work out but the major principles ... are now in place," said senior US official Ralph Braibanti.
EU commissioner Loyola de Palacio said: "This is another very important step for the Galileo project, which recognises both sides as equal partners and creates the optimal conditions for the development of the European system.
"This agreement will allow all users to use in a complementary way both systems with the same receiver: it creates indeed the world standard of radio-navigation by satellite," she added.
The US offer came after the Europeans agreed late last year to modify the modulation of Galileo signals intended for government use so they would not disrupt encrypted GPS signals to be used by the US military and NATO.
The United States has been watching the development of Galileo warily for the past two years, fearing it could compromise US and NATO military operations which rely on the GPS system for navigation and combatant location.
At one point, Washington suggested that the Galileo was an unnecessary rival to GPS that merely duplicated the US system.
But Europe has forged ahead with the project and Galileo is set to be operational by 2008 with 30 satellites encircling the globe in medium orbit.
EU official Heinz Hilbrecht, a director at the European Commission, added that: "Our objective is to have everything ready for the EU-US summit" scheduled to be held on June 25-26 in Ireland.
According to the joint statement, the two sides agreed on key points including:
- a common signal structure for so-called "open" services, and a suitable signal structure for the Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS).
- a process allowing improvements, either jointly or individually, of the baseline signal structures in order to further improve performances.
- confirmation of interoperable time and standards to facilitate the joint use of GPS and Galileo.
Braibanti added that the accord was a welcome example of US-European cooperation, at a time when differences ranging from Iraq to an ongoing series of trade spats have soured the transatlantic mood.
"We've succeeded in converting issues that would have driven a wedge between the US and Europe into a situation where satellite navigation now clearly appears to be an area that is going to clearly add to the strengthen of the transatlantic partnership," he said.
Earlier this month the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, shortlisted three groups as possible operators of the Galileo system.
Consortiums led by Eutelsat, Inmarsat/EADS/Thales and Alcatel Space/Vinci will go into a final process of competitive negotiation to win the contract, it said.
GALILEO - further information
Text and Picture Copyright ? 2004 AFP. All other copyright ? 2004 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction, publication or redistribution of this material without the written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable.
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Rumsfeld: 'Close doesn't count' in bin Laden hunt
Defense chief notes Pakistan's renewed moves against al Qaeda
Thursday, February 26, 2004 Posted: 2:48 PM EST (1948 GMT)
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's military has stepped up its hunt for Taliban and al Qaeda operatives -- including Osama bin Laden -- near the Afghan border, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday after arriving in Afghanistan.
However, Rumsfeld said the forces tracking bin Laden were no "closer or farther at any given moment" from capturing the al Qaeda leader.
"Close doesn't count," he said at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "I suspect that we'll find that it is accomplished at some point in the future, and I wouldn't have any idea when."
U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan reportedly are planning a spring offensive against the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters remaining in Afghanistan.
Earlier Thursday, Rumsfeld visited reconstruction teams in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar before heading to the capital, Kabul, where he met with Karzai.
The defense secretary praised Afghanistan's progress since U.S. forces ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.
"This country has gone in a short period from a haven for terrorists to a coalition ally in the war against terrorism," Rumsfeld said. "Freedom is clearly taking root in this country, and Afghanistan is on a path to become a model for freedom and moderation in the Muslim world."
In recent days, the defense secretary has spoken on the record about Pakistan's military operations in its border areas, which could be an indication of improved U.S. intelligence on al Qaeda movements.
On Tuesday, Pakistani government sources said their forces launched a military operation based on new intelligence, arresting at least 25 people. (Full story)
Government sources had said earlier that the Pakistani army was ready to conduct a major campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Wana area, where bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are believed to be hiding.
Five aid workers killed in attack
On the eve of Rumsfeld's arrival, five aid workers in Afghanistan were shot dead near Kabul late Wednesday, the United Nations said.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said unknown assailants fired on the workers in a village about 15 miles (25 kilometers) north of the capital.
The U.N. mission in Afghanistan called the attack "absolutely unacceptable."
Also Wednesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and another injured in a single-vehicle accident along a main road, U.S. Central Command said. The accident is under investigation.

CNN's Barbara Starr in Kabul contributed to this report.

CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web
Order Code RS21391
Updated February 2, 2004

North Korea's Nuclear Weapons: How Soon an Arsenal?
Sharon A. Squassoni
Specialist in National Defense
Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division
Summary
In December 2002, North Korea ended the 8-year-old freeze on its nuclear program by expelling inspectors and reopening its plutonium production facilities. The CIA assessed that North Korea could produce 5-6 weapons by mid-2003, to add to the 1 or possibly 2 weapons it might already have. In April 2003, North Korean officials claimed they had completed reprocessing all 8000 spent fuel rods (containing enough plutonium for 5-6 weapons), a claim which few believed. On January 8, 2004, North Korean officials showed an unofficial U.S. delegation an empty spent fuel pond, and some plutonium they claimed that had been reprocessed. However, the delegation could not verify North Korean claims. This report will be updated as warranted.
Background
In the early1980s, U.S. satellites tracked a growing indigenous nuclear program in North Korea. A small nuclear reactor at Yongbyon (5MWe), capable of producing about 6kg of plutonium per year, began operating in 1986.1 Later that year, U.S. satellites detected high explosives testing and a new plant to separate plutonium (a necessary step before turning the plutonium into metal for a warhead). In addition, the construction of two larger reactors (50MWe at Yongbyon and 200MWe at Taechon) added to the mounting evidence of a serious, clandestine effort. Although North Korea had joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1985, nuclear safeguards inspections began only in 1992. Those inspections raised questions about how much plutonium North Korea had produced covertly that still have not been resolved. In 1994, North Korea pledged, under the Agreed Framework with the United States, to freeze its plutonium programs and eventually dismantle them in exchange for several kinds of assistance.2 At that time,
CRS-2
1 5MWe is a power rating for the reactor, indicating that it produces 5 million watts of electricity per day (very small). Reactors are also described in terms of million watts of heat (MW thermal).
2 See CRS Issue Brief IB91141, North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program.
Congressional Research Service ^~ The Library of Congress
3 Highly enriched uranium (HEU) has 20% or more U-235 isotope; weapons-grade uranium is 90% or more U-235.
4 While the physical principles of weaponization are well-known, producing a weapon with high reliability, effectiveness and efficiency without testing holds significant challenges.
5 Plutonium that stays in a reactor for a long time (reactor-grade, with high "burn-up") contains about 20% Pu-240; weapons-grade plutonium contains less than 7% Pu-240.
6 Hot cells are heavily shielded rooms with remote handling equipment for working with irradiated materials.
Western intelligence agencies estimated that North Korea had separated enough plutonium for one to two bombs; other sources claimed it was enough for 4-5 bombs.
Weapons Production Milestones
One of the key hurdles in making nuclear weapons is acquiring fissile material - plutonium-239 or highly enriched uranium (HEU).3 Producing these two materials is technically challenging; in comparison, many experts believe weaponization to be a relatively easy process.4 North Korea has industrial-scale uranium mining, and plants for milling, refining, and converting uranium; it also has a fuel fabrication plant, a nuclear reactor, and a reprocessing plant - in short, everything needed to produce Pu-239. In addition, North Korea may be constructing a uranium enrichment plant. In its nuclear reactor, North Korea uses magnox fuel -- natural uranium (>99%U-238) metal, wrapped in magnesium-alloy cladding. About 8000 fuel rods constitute a fuel core for the reactor. When irradiated in a reactor, natural uranium fuel absorbs a neutron and then decays into plutonium (Pu-239). The longer the fuel remains in the reactor, the more it is contaminated by the isotope Pu-240, which can "poison" the functioning of a nuclear weapon.5 Thus, a key consideration is how long the fuel must remain in the reactor to produce optimal plutonium for a weapon. Spent or irradiated fuel, which poses radiological hazards, must cool after removal from the reactor. The cooling phase, estimated by some at 5 months, is proportional to the fuel burn-up.
Reprocessing - or separating the plutonium from waste products and uranium - is the next step. North Korea uses a PUREX separation process, like the United States. After shearing off the fuel cladding, the fuel is dissolved in nitric acid. Components (plutonium, uranium, waste) of the fuel are separated into different streams using organic solvents. In small quantities, separation can be done in hot cells, but larger quantities require significant shielding to prevent deadly exposure to radiation.6 Many experts agree that North Korea has mastered the engineering requirements of plutonium production. Its 5MWe nuclear reactor operated from 1986 to 1994, restarting in January 2003. North Korean officials claimed to have separated plutonium in hot cells and tested the reprocessing plant in 1990, and to have separated all 8000 fuel rods from the 5 MWe reactor between January and June 2003. Some analysts have reported that the 5MWe reactor operated at low efficiencies. The January 2004 unofficial U.S. delegation reported that "All indications from the display in the control room are that the reactor is operating smoothly now...However, we have no way of assessing independently
CRS-3
7 Siegfried Hecker, January 21, 2004, testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
8 Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, (MA: Addison-Wesley), 1997, p. 250.
9 David Albright, Frans Berkhout ,William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 307.
10 Hecker, January 21, 2004 testimony before SFRC.
how well the reactor has operated during the past year."7 The same delegation reported that the reprocessing "facility appeared in good repair;" this contrasts with a 1992 IAEA assessment of the reprocessing plant as "extremely primitive." In the end, however, North Korea's potential for developing a large nuclear arsenal depends on the completion of the two larger reactors and progress in the reported uranium enrichment program.
There is little information on whether North Korea has a workable nuclear weapons design. The simplest nuclear weapon design, a gun-type assembly, cannot use plutonium. Many believe North Korea is capable of manufacturing implosion-type devices, which require sophisticated lenses of high explosives to compress plutonium in the core. As long ago as 1986, U.S. satellites detected high explosives testing with the kind of compression patterns associated with implosion devices, although North Korea claimed the tests were for civilian purposes.8 There have been reports of Soviet scientists aiding North Korea, although CIA officials in the mid-1990s reportedly said that North Korean scientists did not receive training in nuclear weapon technologies from Russia or China.9 A key question is whether North Korea can develop a warhead for its ballistic missiles. Although states that developed nuclear weapons typically used relatively crude delivery methods at first, North Korea has concurrently produced ballistic missiles with sufficient range and payload to carry nuclear warheads. Nonetheless, such a warhead would need to be small and light enough to fit on a missile, and robust and sophisticated enough to tolerate the extreme conditions encountered through a ballistic trajectory.
In January 2004, North Korean officials showed an unofficial U.S. delegation what they claimed was "scrap" from a Pu casting operation; the officials stated that the metal was alloyed. Alloying plutonium with other materials, according to Dr. Siegfried Hecker of Los Alamos National Laboratory, is "common in plutonium metallurgy to retain the delta-phase of plutonium, which makes it easier to cast and shape," and casting plutonium is a step in weapons production.10 Hecker, as a delegation member, assessed that the stated density of the material (as well as the fact that it was not cracked) was consistent with plutonium alloyed with gallium or aluminum. If true, this could indicate a certain sophistication in North Korea's handling of Pu metal. Nonetheless, Hecker could not confirm that the metal was indeed plutonium, that it was alloyed, or that it was from the most recent reprocessing campaign, without conducting actual tests of the material.
Estimating Nuclear Material Production
Most estimates of nuclear weapon stockpiles are based on estimates of fissile material production. To determine how much plutonium is produced, one must know: the average power level of the reactor; days of operation; how much of the fuel is reprocessed and how quickly, and how much plutonium is lost in production processes. According to North Korea, the 5MWe reactor performed poorly in the early years, unevenly irradiating the rods. There is no available data on the reactor's current performance.
CRS-4
11 David Albright and Kevin O'Neill, editors, Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle, ISIS Report, ISIS Press, 2000, p. 88.
12 Transcript of Dec. 29, 2002 "Meet the Press" see [http://www.msnbc.com/news/852714.asp]
13 CIA unclassified paper on North Korea dated November 19, 2002.
14 See Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions,"[http:// www.cia.gov/cia/publications/bian/bian_jan_2003.htm]
15 "North Korea Shifts Tone on Nuclear Plan," International Herald Tribune, April 22, 2003. 16 "North Korea Says It Has Made Fuel For Atom Bombs," New York Times, July 15, 2003. Likewise, the reprocessing facility's efficiency is hard to judge. Before the reported 2003 reprocessing campaign, the reprocessing plant had not operated after the "hot test" in 1990. North Korea told the IAEA that during the 1990 test, it recovered 62 grams of plutonium, losing almost 30% in the waste streams.11 A key consideration is whether or not the reprocessing plant can successfully run continuously, since frequent shutdowns can lead to plutonium losses. According to North Korean officials in January 2004, the plant throughput is 110 tons of spent fuel annually, about twice the amount of fuel in the 5MWe reactor.
Finally, North Korea's technical sophistication will ultimately determine how much plutonium is needed per bomb. Although the international standard is 8kg of Pu per weapon (and 25kg for HEU), technical experts agree that it is possible to make nuclear weapons with less than half that amount. Not many technical experts, however, will speculate on North Korea's abilities in this area.
What Does North Korea Have Now?
More recent assessments emphasize that North Korea has assembled weapons. Secretary of State Powell stated in December 2002 that "We now believe they [North Koreans] have a couple of nuclear weapons and have had them for years."12 An unclassified CIA paper in November 2002 stated that the "North has one or possibly two weapons using plutonium it produced prior to 1992."13 However, the CIA paper stated that this was an assessment that has not changed since the 1990s. In that time, the CIA consistently reported that North Korea "has probably produced enough plutonium for at least, one, and possibly two, nuclear weapons."14 Those estimates were based on assumptions that North Korea had separated between 6 and 10kg of Pu in the late 1980s. In addition to this amount of material, analysts must consider the disposition of the fuel rods in the spent fuel pond. At present, there is no consensus on whether they have been reprocessed.
Has North Korea reprocessed the existing spent fuel?. On April 17, 2003, North Korean officials announced they were successfully reprocessing plutonium. One week later, officials softened that statement to "successfully going forward to reprocess work."15 On July 13, 2003, North Korean officials told U.S. officials in New York that they had completed reprocessing the 8000 fuel rods on June 30.16 On January 8, 2004, North Korean officials told the unofficial U.S. delegation that the reprocessing campaign began in mid-January 2003 and ended at the end of June 2003. In all, they reportedly
CRS-5
17 Hecker January 21, 2004 testimony before SRFC.
18 CIA unclassified point paper distributed to Congressional staff on November 19, 2002. reprocessed 50 tons of spent fuel in less than 6 months. This tracks with earlier estimates that if North Korea reprocessed about 11 tons/month, it might produce enough plutonium for 1 bomb per month.
The unofficial U.S. delegation visiting in January 2004 concluded that the spent fuel pond no longer held the 8000 fuel rods and surmised that those fuel rods could have been moved to a different storage location, but not without significant health and safety risks. The delegation was not allowed to visit the Dry Storage Building, where the fuel rods likely would have been stored before reprocessing. If the 8000 fuel rods from the 5 MWe reactor have been reprocessed, they would yield, according to one estimate, between 25 and 30kg of plutonium, enough for 5 or 6 weapons.
The exact amount of plutonium that might have been reprocessed is not known. The January 2004 U.S. visitors to the plant were not allowed to visit waste facilities, and North Korean officials did not reveal any operating difficulties with the plant, stating that the reprocessing campaign was conducted continuously (four 6-hr shifts). U.S. efforts to detect Krypton-85 (a by-product of reprocessing) reportedly suggested that some reprocessing had taken place, but were largely inconclusive.
Adding to the Arsenal
Make New Plutonium. On February 6, 2003, North Korean officials announced that the 5 Mwe reactor was operating, and commercial satellite photography confirmed activity in March. In January 2004, North Korean officials told the unofficial U.S. delegation that the reactor was now operating smoothly at 100% of its rated power. The U.S. visitors noted that the display in the reactor control room and steam plumes from the cooling towers confirmed operation, but that there was no way of knowing how it had operated over the last year.
A common estimate is that the reactor generates 6kg of Pu per year, roughly 1 bomb per year, but the reactor would likely be operated for several years before fuel is withdrawn. In 3 years, it could generate about 14-18kg of plutonium, enough for 2 to 3 weapons. Shorter cycles are possible, but would waste considerable fuel. Assuming a 6- month cooling period for plutonium, North Korea would be ready to reprocess by August 2006, and ready to convert into metal by February 2007.
Bring New Reactors On-Line. The reactors at Yongbyon (50MWe) and Taechon (200MWe) may be several years from completion. U.S. visitors in January 2004 saw no construction cranes, heavy corrosion, and cracks in concrete building structures at Yongbyon, reporting that the reactor building "looks in a terrible state of repair," but they did not visit the Taechon site.17 The CIA estimates that the two reactors could generate about 275kg of plutonium per year.18 In January 2004, North Korean officials told the unofficial U.S. delegation that they are evaluating what to do with both reactors.
CRS-6
19 Ibid.
20 "Reactor Restarted, North Korea Says," Washington Post, February 6, 2003.
21 "US Suspects North Korea Moved Ahead on Weapons," New York Times, May 6, 2003. Produce Highly Enriched Uranium for Weapons. In an unclassified working paper on North Korea's nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment distributed to Congressional staff on November 19, 2002, the CIA estimated that North Korea "is constructing a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational - which could be as soon as middecade." 19 Such a plant would need to produce more than 50kg of HEU per year, which would require cascades of thousands of centrifuges. The CIA's unclassified paper noted only that in 2001, North Korea "began seeking centrifuge-related materials in large quantities." Little is known about the specifications of the North Korean centrifuges. An enrichment program, which the North Koreans alternately have admitted and denied having, offers at least three benefits. Such a program would be more difficult to locate and target than the Pu operations, if military strike options are considered. Second, HEU could give the North Koreans the option of producing either simpler weapons (gunassembly type) or more sophisticated weapons (using composite pits or boosted fission techniques. Third, it is another potential bargaining chip to use with the United States.
How to Verify North Korean Claims?
Information about North Korea's nuclear weapons production has depended largely on remote monitoring and defector information, with mixed results. Satellite images correctly indicated the start-up of the 5 MWe reactor, but no detailed information about its operations. Satellites detected truck movements at Yongbyon in late January, but could not confirm that the trucks were moving spent fuel to the reprocessing plant.20 And, satellite imagery could not peer into an empty spent fuel pond, which was shown to U.S. visitors in January 2004. Although satellite imagery reportedly detected some activity at the reprocessing plant in April 2003, U.S. officials could not confirm that large-scale reprocessing was taking place.21
The unofficial U.S. delegation in January 2004 could not confirm North Korean claims of having reprocessed the spent fuel. Specifically, it could not confirm that the material shown was in fact plutonium, or that all the spent fuel had been reprocessed. It may be possible for future delegations to carry out tests to verify such claims. At a minimum, it would be necessary to prove that the North Korean plutonium had been separated from fission products in the last year, by using isotopic measurement techniques. At most, it would be desirable to prove that 25-30kg of Pu had been separated (in 2003), which had been converted to metal and cast into weapon components. Absent an opportunity to measure a specific quantity of Pu (25-30kg), measuring waste products from the reprocessing plant could yield valuable information. Similarly, taking samples in glove boxes where conversion had taken place could be helpful. (Note that these types of activities were controversial in the past.) North Korean cooperation would be necessary for any of these measures. On HEU, North Korea appears not to want to prove its expertise, but if it did, providing a sample of enriched uranium that could be measured for certain qualities could help prove that it had been indigenously enriched.



>> BE FRANK?

Private accounts alone can't bail out Social Security
Tue Feb 24, 6:40 AM ET Add Op/Ed - USATODAY.com

After putting Social Security (news - web sites) reform on the back burner for several years, President Bush (news - web sites) is making a new push for a plan that would let workers divert part of their payroll taxes into personal savings accounts. Bush touted the proposal in his State of the Union address and again in his economic report to Congress this month.
From the way supporters describe it, the concept is simple and appealing. Workers would invest a portion of their Social Security taxes into stocks and bonds that typically yield higher returns than the current government-managed system. What's more, they say, the step is crucial in saving Social Security from insolvency as 75 million baby boomers retire during the coming years.
But much like a miracle weight-loss plan that promises stunning results without diet or exercise, the proposals to create private accounts avoid the difficult reforms required to ensure Social Security's long-term financial health: reduced benefits, higher taxes or a combination of the two.
Certainly, personal savings accounts can be part of a broader debate on reforming the national retirement system, particularly if young workers are willing to give up some traditional Social Security benefits in exchange for the opportunity to save on their own. Pretending, however, that the mere introduction of personal savings accounts will solve Social Security's problems is not only dishonest, it also misleads the public about the hard choices that will be required to put the nation's retirement program on sound financial footing.

Among the problems personal accounts don't address:

*Demographics. Social Security faces a financial crisis because the number of retirees collecting benefits in 20 years is expected to increase 60%, while the number of workers paying taxes to support those benefits is projected to increase a mere 14%. In addition, those retirees are likely to live and collect benefits longer than previous generations of retirees. Bush's own commission on Social Security reform concluded in 2001 that private accounts would not close the projected gap between taxes coming in and benefits going out.

*Costs. In the short term, personal accounts would worsen Social Security's financial condition. The reason: Some of the taxes now needed to guarantee traditional benefits to current retirees would be tapped to set up the accounts.

The Social Security Administration (news - web sites) estimates that, depending on how the new accounts are structured, the government could have to borrow roughly $1.5 trillion during the next decade to cover the loss of taxes diverted into private accounts. That would be the equivalent of charging $8,800 to every worker's credit card.
As recently as 2001, Congress and the administration promised to reserve the government's annual budget surpluses to repair Social Security or finance the transition costs of moving to a system of personal savings accounts. Since then, they have broken their pledge by going on a spending and tax-cutting spree that has squandered $475 billion in Social Security surpluses on other purposes and has put the nation $1.1 trillion deeper into debt.
Some proponents of personal savings accounts argue that the approach can fix Social Security without reducing benefits or increasing taxes. They contend that payroll levies deposited in the accounts would generate higher investment returns than if the government kept the money, providing retirees with more money than they would receive from traditional benefits.
But their argument glosses over the fact that while personal savings accounts hold promise as a way to structure Social Security benefits for today's younger workers, they aren't a realistic alternative for retirees or those nearing retirement.
Nor do supporters deal squarely with the cost and difficulty of converting Social Security from a retirement system in which today's workers fund retirees' benefits to one in which workers fund part of their own retirements through their personal savings accounts. They dismiss the huge costs of switching to a new system as an upfront expense that would be recouped many times over in decades to come.
A frank discussion about Social Security's repair requires acknowledging that personal savings accounts alone aren't a solution, as Bush's reform commission concluded. The administration tacitly has endorsed this view by not challenging the panel's findings, though the White House has been silent about the benefit cuts or tax increases that also would be necessary.
The sooner that discussion occurs, the more gradual the changes could be. A recent study from the Brookings Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites) estimates that action now could fix Social Security with modest changes - for example, about a 4% increase in lifetime payroll taxes and an equal decrease in benefits for someone now 35 years old.
Just as regular exercise and sensible eating can keep the pounds off longer than a miracle diet, difficult reforms today can improve Social Security's health far into the future.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

No administrative detention for Vanunu
By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN AND MATHEW GUTMAN
Vanunu. Then and now.
Photo: Channel 2

Convicted nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu was keeping his future intentions close to his chest and that has Israel worried.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Justice Minister Yosef Lapid met in Tel Aviv Tuesday night to discuss just what could be done to prevent Vanunu from becoming a threat to national security once his 18-year prison term is up on April 21.
They heard from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, representatives from the Mossad and Shin Bet and a senior member of the Atomic Energy Commission.
On the agenda was the possibility to invoke an arcane regulation to prevent Vanunu from leaving the country or even the possibility of keeping him under administrative detention.
The Prime Minister's office announced after the meeting that it accepted the position of the Attorney General that appropriate legal supervision will be placed in order to prevent him from relaying further security breaches. The
statement said that the proposal to keep Vanunu under administrative detention was rejected.
Sources close to Sharon said Israel would use all means necessary to maintain state security, but they doubted whether it would involve administrative detention. Various options were examined including keeping Vanunu under semi house arrest and under constant guard.
Mofaz spoke of the need to find a balance between protecting state security and maintaining a citizen's civil rights.
"We need to keep the democratic essence of Israel. There is a need to take precautions but not such extreme steps," Lapid told Army Radio before the meeting.
Israel is keen on keeping Vanunu in the country under close supervision. According to Vanuu's adopted parents, he rejected an offer for early release in return for a deal for never leaving Israel and never speaking about nukes.
On Tuesday, Shin Bet agents again visited Shikma Prison in Ashkelon and spent three and a half hours trying to get a sense of Vanunu's intention following his released, said security sources. Apparently, he did not cooperate and ignored the questioners.
The meeting at the Prime Minister's office in Tel Aviv followed a Shin Bet "interview," with Vanunu in which security officials tried to gauge how dangerous Vanunu might be, if at all, upon his release.
In 1986 Vanunu severely damaged Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity when he sold to The Sunday Times photographs of plutonium spheres used for triggers in Israeli nuclear warheads taken from inside the reactor at Dimona. His interview was widely used to determine that Israel then had an arsenal of some 200 nuclear bombs.
Vanunu, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was asked what he intends to do after his release and whether or not he intends to stay in Israel. Vanunu converted to Christianity in Australia, where his brother Meir lives, in 1986, and even then stated he does not intend to return to Israel.
But return he did. A few days before the expose of Israel's nuclear plant was to go to press Vanunu - who had provide the Times with documents and photos of the installation - met an American tourist in London. Cindy, a Mossad agent, reportedly lured him to a safe house in Rome. From there he was sedated and bundled off to Israel for trial.
Still there are doubts that any information that Vanunu might divulge are of any use, almost twenty years after he last worked in Dimona. Many of the personnel he knew, none of whose identities were included the his now infamous 1986 interview with the Sunday Times of London in, have since retired.
Furthermore Israel has upgraded security precautions at its most sensitive sites, making Vanunu's memories of security installations and precautions nearly irrelevant.
Following an interview with his brothers Meir and Asher Vanunu told them that he has no intention of leaking any more information. The Sunday Times never paid him for the world exclusive story that rocked Israel's intelligence community, the paper said.
However it has contributed to his legal campaign which has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, stated the weekly.
He was convicted by the Jerusalem District Court on February 27, 1988, and sentenced to 18 years in jail from the day of his arrest.
Last year, a panel of three High Court Justices ruled that Vanunu remained a threat to national security and therefore did not have the same rights as regular prisoners. The only visitors he is allowed are first-degree relatives, his lawyer and a clergyman.

------------------------------------------------
New Book Chronicles Hillary's Political Ambitions
Lady MacBeth of the Ozarks
by Loredana Vuoto
Posted Feb 24, 2004
Hillary Clinton--or as authors R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. and Mark W. Davis like to call her, Lady MacBeth--is determined to return to the White House as a resident again--only this time not as first lady, but as President of the United States.
She will stop at nothing to obtain her objective. Lying, cheating and partisan politics are all par for the course, according to Tyrrell and Davis. The two men have joined forces in Madame Hillary (published by Regnery, a sister company of HUMAN EVENTS) to chronicle Hillary's ambitious road map to become the first female President.
Tyrrell, founder and renowned editor-in-chief of The American Spectator magazine, is not new to reporting the high crimes and misdemeanors of Bill and Hillary Clinton. In fact, it was The American Spectator's tough investigative reporting during Mr. Clinton's presidency that helped to expose numerous scandals--Filegate, Clinton's sexual escapades, the transfer of missile technology to Red China in exchange for illegal campaign contributions, and Monicagate.
Davis is also no newcomer to cataloguing Bill and Hillary's numerous misdeeds. A former White House speechwriter to George H. W. Bush who also formerly served on the Republican National Committee (RNC) during the Reagan years, Mr. Davis is the quintessential Washington insider who has witnessed the political machinations of the dynamic duo for years. Together, authors Davis and Tyrrell tell a chilling tale of Hillary's insatiable desire for power.
The authors argue that, despite Mrs. Clinton's efforts to repackage herself as a moderate Democrat, the senator from New York remains a hard-core left-wing elitist who is pro-Big Government, pro-affirmative action and pro-abortion.
Although Mrs. Clinton would have the public believe she is a woman of the people and for the people, Tyrrell and Davis dispel that notion. Rather, they explain Mrs. Clinton's true chameleon nature, describing her as "a Coat and Tie Radical--a phantasm who takes on the shape of respectability: wife, mother, first lady, senator from New York, all while harboring and insinuating the agenda of the radical left."
In particular, the authors cite the success of both Bill and Hillary in cementing their hold over the Democratic Party, transforming it into a ruthless political machine. The darling and hero of the liberal media, Mrs. Clinton can be coy and cunning when need be.
The authors explain how she and her husband have been bankrolling the Democratic Party for years, giving them complete control of its future. Tyrrell and Davis also note that the creation of HILLPAC was a strategic move designed to raise money for the Clintons as well as fund liberal causes such as women's rights and the environment.
Furthermore, the book powerfully displays the lengths Mrs. Clinton will go to become President of the United States. It discusses how Hillary and Bill encouraged Gen. Wesley Clark's failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, using him as a stalking horse to counter possible runs for the White House from other candidates.
Madame Hillary also exposes Mrs. Clinton's wily tactics of criticizing President Bush and his administration when it is convenient for her. She strategically supported the war against Iraq, while insinuating that President Bush had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks--and therefore, could have prevented them.
Hillary has set her sights on the White House in 2008. She assiduously has been revamping her image in the media as a pragmatic Democrat who is an effective advocate for her constituents. She has championed the toppling of Saddam Hussein, fiscal responsibility and increased rural aid for farmers in more conservative upstate New York.
Her strategy is working.
This is why it is important for Republicans to remind voters of Hillary's liberal record and the destructive role she played during her husband's administration. It was Mrs. Clinton who led the failed efforts to establish a Canadian-style public health care system. She also was involved in much of the corruption that pervaded the Clinton presidency--Whitewater being the most obvious example.
Mrs. Clinton represents a new breed of Democrat, who, like her husband, combines radical social liberalism with ruthless pursuit of political power. She seeks to advance an anti-family, pro-gay rights agenda while simultaneously practicing a political cronyism and ceaseless fund-raising that puts old-style Democratic bosses to shame. Mrs. Clinton must be stopped.
Madame Hillary provides a much-needed blueprint.

To purchase Madame Hillary, click here.
Miss Vuoto is an assistant national editor at the Washington Times.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CIA BLEW 9/11 TIP IN 1999
February 24, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The federal commission reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks is examining whether the United States failed to aggressively track one of the hijackers after obtaining his first name and phone number more than two years before the attacks.
The tip, received in March 1999, appears to be one of the earliest signs that U.S. officials had about one of the 2001 hijackers. It also may have represented a missed chance for U.S. intelligence to uncover a terror cell in Germany that was a key element of the hijacking plot.
"The commission has been actively investigating the issue for some time," Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission, said yesterday.
"I'm not going to comment on the progress of our investigation, but the Hamburg cell and what was known about the plotters" is an important part of the review, he said.
The hijacker was identified as Marwan al-Shehhi by The New York Times, which reported German officials tipped off the CIA.
Al-Shehhi - who piloted the second World Trade Center jet - was a member of the al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, and a roommate of suspected 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.
A U.S. official said that thousands of names of suspected terrorists come across the intelligence community's screens, making them hard to track.
AP
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

>> THE ADMIN...KELLY ET AL...

The Multilateral Mantra And North Korea
Peter Hayes, Nautilus Institute, February 20, 2004

Flying to Beijing for the second round of six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, American diplomats are chanting a multilateral mantra "CVID CVID CVID" as if repeating it often enough will make it happen in North Korea.

CVID stands for Complete Verifiable Irreversible Disarmament. It is the formula that the State Department is bringing to the talks, saying that North Korea must commit to CVID and commence tangible dismantlement before the United States will outline its roadmap of reciprocal commitments to provide security and development assistance to North Korea.

On February 12, Administration officials confirmed that acceptable "tangible steps" might include a complete declaration by the DPRK of all nuclear activities, especially those related to enrichment activity, but would also have to include a dismantlement action that was not already part of the US-DPRK Agreed Framework before it collapsed in late 2002. Such a step might be to hand over separated plutonium to the United States or a designated third party. What officials insist is not on the table is a reciprocal up-front commitment to normalize political and economic relations with the DPRK if they should commit to CVID. "Payoffs" for North Korean capitulation, they say, come only after the DPRK commits to and implements CVID.

CVID is simply another way of stating that North Korea must fulfill its NPT and IAEA safeguards and non-nuclear obligations, as well as observe the 1992 inter-Korean Denuclearization Declaration. Given that the North has rejected this formula already and has stated its own conditions for returning to the non-nuclear fold, CVID is a non-starter in Pyongyang.

Conversely, CVID is an effective symbolic way of rejecting the past, both the Clintonian legacy of the Agreed Framework, and North Korea's nuclear machinations. But, putting it front-and-center as non-negotiable in these talks is like trying to drive down a high speed freeway while staring in one's rearview mirror the entire time. It's a recipe for catastrophic collision.

What then can US diplomats achieve in Beijing? At best, they hope to agree on holding future working level negotiations with the DPRK involving the six parties on a variety of issues, including the nuclear issue. If no working level talks are achieved, then we will know that the talks have failed completely and the nuclear stand-off in Korea will be complete-exactly what the hardliners in the Bush Administration predict and hope will occur. At worst, this could lead to a North Korean nuclear test and deployment, or some other ambush that the North Koreans dream up at the DMZ or elsewhere.

Why then are US diplomats engaging in faux-diplomacy, knowing that while they may not fail altogether in Beijing, they also cannot succeed in forcing the DPRK to capitulate on American terms to CVID?

The standard account is that the US government is grid-locked over how to handle the DPRK with pragmatic-engagement policy currents colliding with a hardline-regime change policy current. The result is an incoherent river of muddied waters.

However, this account underestimates the role that President Bush plays in formulating policy toward the North. Some attribute the current rigid negotiating stance to the Oval Office's desire to delay negotiations until after the November elections, partly because Bush is preoccupied with Iraq, and partly because it is better from an electoral angle to not be seen "dealing" with evil leaders unless they are dead or in prison, a tendency said to be reinforced by his personal worldview.

Yet another explanation is that Bush delegates authority to his seniors-as he reportedly did to Powell last summer on the North Korea issue at the same time that he told Rumsfeld to butt out--but fails to overrule challenges to this delegation during implementation. Put simply, Bush doesn't back his subordinates and is a weak president-a matter of his ruling style rather than ideology. Still others speculate that for all his post-911 security rhetoric, Bush simply doesn't comprehend how dangerous it is for the North Koreans to now have enough fissile material to make, test and even export nuclear weapons.

But American officials are crystal clear that the multilateral approach to North Korea comes from Bush himself; and that hardliners, especially VP Cheney, have intervened to block Powell from developing flexible negotiating policy options in the preparations for the Beijing talks after Bush put him in charge of dealing with North Korea.

Why Powell allows this to happen-as reportedly occurred in a crucial inter-agency meeting on December 19, 2003 when Cheney intervened personally to reverse the course set by State Department pragmatists in response to Chinese draft declaration at the pending talks-is anyone's guess. Some say he is waiting for the right time to fall on his sword and that the stakes are not yet high enough in the talks with the DPRK to take this ultimate step in confronting Bush.

For now, what this leadership failure means is that US diplomats are going into the Beijing talks with both hands tied behind their back.

This self-induced diplomatic disablement raises the broader question about the Administrations multilateral mantra. Are the Beijing talks actually multilateral negotiations at all? Or, are they just window-dressing for the unilateralist hardline wrapped up in diplomatic doubletalk?

One way to view the talks is through the realist lens of great power politics whereby states either ally with weaker parties to balance an aspiring hegemonic power or bandwagon with the most powerful state. Neither of these dynamics captures what is underway in Beijing. No-one is bandwagoning with tiny North Korea, with or without nuclear weapons. China, Russia, and South Korea do not perceive themselves to be threatened significantly by North Korea's nuclear weapons although they oppose such a capacity for other reasons. No-one is turning up in Beijing to bandwagon with the United States against the DPRK's nuclear threat, as it does not appear to be an important factor in the talks except possibly for Japan and bizarrely, distant Australia which is not even at the table.

At the talks, China, Russia and North Korea form one loose bloc of states that does not accept American hegemony and unilateral dominance of the region and world affairs. Conversely, the United States, Japan, and South Korea have coalesced into a tighter bloc of states insistent that the DPRK play by global rules. Backing this bloc are a rag-tag group of bit players on North Korea such as the EU and Australia who have signed up for the Proliferation Security Initiative. However, the talks themselves have exhibited fluid alignment and each party except for the host, China, has attempted to pick bones with North Korea over one or more issues of bilateral concern while uniformly declaring that the DPRK must remain non-nuclear.

In spite of the American hardline, therefore, the talks do not appear to reflect the exercise of raw power in pursuit of traditional realpolitik. Rather than an abuse or misuse of American power, from a realist perspective, the American stance is more like an abdication and refusal to exercise American power.

Another way to interpret the talks is as an evolving negotiation process in an effort to institutionalize a set of norms and procedures. Certainly this is an avowed hope of American diplomats at the talks although they have not settled on any particular strategy for building a regional security architecture that transcends the North Korea issue should a breakthrough occur.

But how serious is the American intention in this regard? Multilateral negotiations for arms control, trade, and environment over the last four decades, for example, have exhibited four general characteristics:

transactional difficulties arising from increasing the number of players from two to many states which have divergent interests at stake and a-symmetrical capabilities brought to bear on the problem;
the increasing role of non-state actors mobilized by international collective action problems;
a major role for international organizations in structuring the negotiating agenda and facilitating process-determined outcomes; and
the difficulty of sustaining preliminary commitments of states because multilateral negotiations tend to be protracted and outlast changes in leadership or staffing by states.
The six-party talks exhibit none of these characteristics except the first and cannot be regarded as a serious attempt to launch an inclusive security community in East Asia. American officials express hope that China may clarify its international interests as a new player on the global stage and step up to the plate in exerting decisive leverage on North Korea to comply with CVID. While China has indeed "come of age" in modern diplomacy in recent years, Beijing is more likely to view North Korea through the lens of traditional imperial diplomacy by exercising suzerainty aimed at avoiding wars on its borders[1] while keeping South Korea deeply invested in China's own economic transition and political stability. Not surprisingly, North Korea has refused to submit to this implied Chinese hegemony and has refused to accept the legitimacy of its convening role and its intermediary role for passing American "messages." These talks do not appear to be laying the foundation for a new regional security architecture in which all states are heavily vested.

Thus, the talks appear to reflect the triumph of ideology over pragmatism and to be driven by the White House's domestic concerns rather than any regional vision of negotiated d?tente with North Korea as a precursor to a security community. An authentic commitment to a negotiated solution requires much more time and dialogue than is available in transient diplomatic consultations that amount to muscular diplomacy and face saving meetings hosted by China.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is missing the main game in town: the vibrant North Korean economic recovery and the pressure points offered by participating in this irreversible transition. Over time, the leverage over its nuclear program afforded by exploiting North Korea's economic dilemmas will diminish as North Koreans bootstrap their economy and regional powers cut their own deals with the North.

North Korea will likely implement its own version of France's tous azimut or "aimed-in-all-directions" independent nuclear deterrent strategy. It will likely obtain sufficient resources to stabilize a low-level economy that supports the leadership's lifestyle and the system's stability. Regional states will adjust to this reality and the world will become that much more insecure with another nuclear weapons state in a volatile conflict zone involving American forces.

Of course, I pray that America's diplomats will wrestle the North Koreans to the ground in Beijing and that they will agree to CVID on US terms in a miraculous act of nuclear redemption. Unfortunately, hope is a poor basis for securing nuclear non-proliferation in Korea.

President Bush needs to focus on North Korea and take the steps necessary to engage them in any negotiating format-bilateral or multilateral. These are not hard to understand, just different from what he is comfortable with. They are:

Step 1: Establish a high-level North Korea policy czar with authority to act on behalf of the president, with direct access to him.
Step 2: Declare a detailed US-DPRK roadmap of bilateral obligations
Step 3: Initiate a regional security framework based on common security principles and issue a US-DPRK mutual security assurance
Step 4: Insist on Immediate DPRK Unilateral Plutonium Re-Freeze, Enrichment Freeze and Declaration, Intrusive Inspections, and Missile Export Moratorium as Precondition for Implementing the Roadmap
Step 5: Take the DPRK off the US terrorist list when they roll up their narco-criminal networks
Step 6: Put the ROK front-and-center of implementation of the roadmap
Step 7: Increase US-ROK military readiness, and negotiate conventional cooperative security agenda with DPRK

[1] Zhang Lidong and Pan Yihe, "The Traditional Chinese Thoughts Resources of International Organization Construction,", in Wang Yizhou, Construction Within Contradiction, Multiple Perspectives on the Relationship between China and International Organizations," China Development Publishing House, Beijing, 2003, p. 273.

----------------------------------------------------

Ensuring a Korean Peninsula Free of Nuclear Weapons
James Kelly, Asst. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Remarks to The Research Conference - North Korea: Towards a New International Engagement Framework, February 13, 2004.

Introduction

It is an honor and a pleasure to address the distinguished participants in the research conference on "North Korea: Towards a New International Framework." I thank the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy and the Korea Economic Institute for organizing it, and the American Enterprise Institute, the Chosun Ilbo, the Ford Foundation, and the Kookmin Bank for their support of the conference.

With a resumption of Six-Party Talks on ending North Korea's nuclear threat less than two weeks away, this conference is very timely. The United States, and the international community as a whole, can benefit from the wisdom of the scholars, analysts, and policymakers here today from the United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan, China, and Russia on the great and complicated challenge that North Korea poses to regional stability and the international nonproliferation regime.

For six decades, the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula has been one of the chief concerns of American foreign and security policy. While the Republic of Korea has, in recent decades, developed into a leading member of the international community, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea took a historic wrong turn from the very start of its existence. The result has been self-induced isolation resulting in insecurity for the regime and enormous suffering for the people of North Korea. In addition, the regime has become a source of global concern by its widely spread proliferation and illicit activities.

The net result is that the D.P.R.K. has fallen further and further behind the dynamic East Asian economy and the world. North Korea's best hope is to embrace the opportunity presented by the Six Party Talks and chart a new course. We and the other parties realize that moving away from isolation and estrangement toward openness and engagement will be a major undertaking and we are willing to help. Everyone knows that establishing the grounds for normalcy and peaceful co-existence will be difficult. However, we have no choice but to make every effort to try -- and that's why President Bush at the APEC meeting last October made clear our willingness to document multilateral assurances of security.

But, this process of transformation must begin with a fundamental decision inside the D.P.R.K. North Korea needs to make a strategic choice -- and make it clear to the world as Libya has done -- that it will abandon its nuclear weapons and programs in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner. Two days ago, President Bush -- in a most important speech -- called on other regimes to follow the example of Libya. As he put it, "Abandoning the pursuit of illegal weapons can lead to better relations with the United States, and other free nations. Continuing to seek those weapons will not bring security or international prestige, but only political isolation, economic hardship and other unwelcome consequences."

Moreover, as negotiator in our multilateral talks, I would offer that we also need a strong commitment to timely action. Given the history of broken and unsuccessful agreements with the D.P.R.K., we cannot afford to leave the hard work for the end of the implementation process.

North Korea's Nuclear Programs

North Korea nuclear ambitions go back at least to the 1970s and are deeply grounded in its policy of national independence. Several decades ago, a North Korean leadership fearful of its own people and of the challenge represented by the economically developing, democratized Korean republic to its south, set out on a path to acquire nuclear weapons. Over time, various justifications have been offered. But, whatever the regime's rationale, the United States believes that a decade or so ago North Korea probably managed to develop at least a couple nuclear weapons.

As we now see it, maintaining a nuclear arsenal apparently has become a core, not peripheral, element of North Korea's national defense strategy. Thus, the challenge of getting rid of nuclear weapons and capabilities, needs to be seen in the context of North Korea's willingness to dramatically alter its national strategy. With the changed environment of this new century, among the world's vibrant economies, there is such an opportunity for North Korea to seize.

A Partial "Solution"

Ten years ago, we believed we were on the road toward ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program, once and for all. In 1992, North Korea reached an agreement with South Korea to ensure a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons, but North Korea almost immediately walked away from that arrangement. The U.S. stepped in and, with the U.S.-D.P.R.K. Agreed Framework of 1994, succeeded in freezing North Korea's known nuclear weapons program, a plutonium-based effort centered on a place called Yongbyon.

In exchange for North Korea's promises eventually to come clean about its nuclear past, dismantle its known facilities, and put its remaining nuclear activities under full IAEA safeguards, the United States organized under its leadership an international consortium -- the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO - to finance and supply the light water reactor project. The KEDO partners, primarily the Republic of Korea and Japan, have spent over $1.3 billion on the construction of two light water reactors. And the U.S provided North Korea with half a billion dollars worth of heavy fuel oil between 1994 and 2002, to replace the energy presumed to be foregone by the freeze of the North's nuclear program.

In the meantime, in response to a humanitarian crisis, the United States and many other countries came to the rescue of the North Korean people, who suffered a terrible famine in the mid-1990s due primarily to the leadership`s mismanagement of the economy. Between 1995 and 2003, the United States alone provided nearly 2,000,000 metric tons of food aid worth $654,000,000 to North Korea through the UN World Food Program. According to the World Food Program, the international community as a whole has provided an estimated average of 1.2 million metric tons of food aid each year to North Korea since 1999.

North Korea Pursues an HEU Program

In the summer of 2002, however, the United States discovered that North Korea had not kept its part of the bargain. We learned conclusively that it was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program based not on plutonium but on uranium enrichment. This was a clear violation of North Korea's obligations to South Korea under the Joint Denuclearization Declaration of 1992 and to the international community under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the D.P.R.K.'s Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It was also a fundamental breach of the U.S.-D.P.R.K. Agreed Framework, which aimed to "achieve peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula." By the way, our negotiator of the Agreed Framework, Ambassador Robert Gallucci, left the North Koreans in no doubt that any uranium enrichment program would break the Agreed Framework. As he testified to Congress in December, 1994, the Agreed Framework requires the D.P.R.K. to implement the North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which precludes any reprocessing or enrichment capability. "If there were ever any move to enrich," Ambassador Gallucci told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "we would argue they were not in compliance with the Agreed Framework."

The matter was extremely serious. North Korea's goal appeared to be a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational.

The President thus instructed me to lead an interagency U.S. team to Pyongyang in October 2002 to quietly inform the North Koreans that we knew about their secret nuclear arms program. I was to tell them that we had intended to propose bilateral negotiations on our entire range of concerns with North Korea, including missile proliferation, chemical and biological weapons, conventional forces, terrorism, and human rights. However, the North Koreans' violation of the Agreed Framework had put the nuclear issue again front and center. I was to call on North Korea to reverse its nuclear course, after which the United States would be prepared to consider bilateral negotiations on other matters.

The North Koreans Escalate

Surprisingly, the North Koreans acknowledged their uranium enrichment program to us and suggested that if we provided them with additional benefits, they would, at some point in the future, resolve our concerns about their nuclear programs -- how they would do so, they did not say. In other words, even though the North Koreans had violated the Agreed Framework, which had proven to be only a partial and thus unsatisfactory solution, they were proposing to us that we basically repeat the same formula. We weren't prepared to accept that. As Secretary Powell has said, we were not going to "buy the same horse" twice.

Instead of taking the opportunity we had afforded them to begin walking back their covert nuclear arms program, the North Koreans escalated the situation. In December 2002, they expelled IAEA inspectors and began to reactivate the 5 MW nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. In January, the D.P.R.K. announced its withdrawal from the NPT. And in October 2003, it declared it had finished reprocessing its 8,000-plus existing spent fuel rods. If that is indeed the case, it could have produced enough fissile material for an additional five or six nuclear weapons.

The North Korean Acknowledgement and Subsequent Denial

Let me digress here briefly to address the issue of the North Koreans' acknowledgement to me of their uranium enrichment program, because they later began to deny that they had done so, causing some confusion in the media.

The acknowledgement came over the entire course of a 40-minute-long meeting that my team and I had with North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, the number two man in the North Korean foreign ministry and said to be close to Kim Jong Il.

Kang's remarks were interpreted into English by his own interpreter, and his original Korean presentation was monitored by our side's experienced professional interpreter.

It was very clear to all members of my team that Kang was acknowledging the existence of a highly enriched uranium program and that North Korea was willing to negotiate about addressing our concerns about it if the United States first provided additional benefits to North Korea.

Thereafter, for nearly two months, even after we publicly stated that the North Koreans had acknowledged the uranium enrichment program to us, the D.P.R.K. did not deny the program or the acknowledgement. Instead, to the rest of the world, the D.P.R.K. essentially took an NCND position -- that is, to "neither confirm nor deny" the program. Only later, when it became clear that this was a major tactical error that was resulting in massive international criticism, did D.P.R.K. officials first begin to suggest that the United States had misunderstood its statements, and later still that the United States had lied about them. Only much later did the North Koreans actually begin to claim that they have no HEU program.

In any event, the key point in regard to this issue is that the steps taken by the United States subsequent to my mission to Pyongyang in October 2002 were in response not to the North Korean acknowledgement but to our knowledge, based on our own intelligence, of the North Korean uranium enrichment program. We are confident that our intelligence in this matter is well-founded. In fact, the recent confession of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan suggests that, if anything, the North Korean HEU program is of longer duration and more advanced than we had assessed.

U.S. Policy

So how are we to respond to this very serious situation in which North Korea has lifted the freeze on its plutonium-based nuclear arms program and is aggressively pursuing an enriched-uranium nuclear arms program?

The United States has adopted two basic principles for resolving this situation. First, we cannot accept anything less than the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of the North's nuclear programs. Second, the diplomatic format for achieving that outcome must be a multiparty framework.

Complete, Verifiable and Irreversible Dismantlement

We insist on the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all of North Korea's nuclear programs because we must not again allow a situation in which the North's dismantlement of its nuclear arms program is put off into the distant future, as it was under the Agreed Framework. That would permit North Korea, at any time, to resume its use of nuclear threats to blackmail the international community.

We will not be satisfied with a resolution that is not complete. North Korea must dismantle not only its plutonium program but also its uranium enrichment program and its existing nuclear weapons.

We will not be satisfied with a resolution that is not verifiable. In this regard, the burden is not on the international community but on North Korea to come clean. As the Libya cases illustrates, there are ways that North Korea can do this as a sovereign country. It is certainly in North Korea's interests, as it is in Libya's.

We will not be satisfied with a "reversible solution". This must be once and for all. North Korea's nuclear programs and facilities must be dismantled, and never reconstituted. Mechanisms can be found to do this that are reasonable. This will not be difficult to accomplish once North Korea has made a fundamental decision to abandon its nuclear programs.

The Advantages of a Multilateral Framework

To accomplish these ends, the United States has strongly supported a multilateral process. Some have criticized this, and urged that multilateral talks be replaced, or at least supplemented, by bilateral U.S.-D.P.R.K. negotiations on the nuclear issue. We don't intend to do that. Let me explain why.

First, and most important, the D.P.R.K.'s nuclear arms programs are not just a bilateral U.S.-North Korean issue. North Korea's pursuit of a nuclear arsenal is a serious threat to regional peace and security and a challenge to the global non-proliferation regime. The United States' bilateral effort to address the problem, resulting in the Agreed Framework of 1994, was less than successful. Other countries need to bring their interests, influence, and resources to bear, not only in persuading North Korea to end its nuclear arms program but to ensure that the program is never resumed and that broader conditions on the Korean Peninsula are conducive to lasting peace and security. I might add that South Korea and Japan have their own relations and problems with the D.P.R.K., and these are being addressed far more directly than was the case ten years ago.

Thus, in early 2003, the United States proposed multilateral talks to end North Korea's nuclear program. The P.R.C. made strenuous efforts with North Korea to realize such talks. The result was trilateral talks in Beijing in April, with participation by the P.R.C., North Korea, and the U.S., and Six-Party Talks in Beijing in August, which also included the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Russia.

The two rounds of multilateral talks in Beijing represented important first steps in achieving a fundamental solution of the North Korean nuclear problem. The North Koreans heard from all of the other parties present that a North Korean nuclear weapons capability is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. And the other parties heard first-hand North Korea's threats to expand its nuclear weapons program. This was very important, because, in the past, the North Koreans utilized the tactic of making such threats to the United States while denying them to others -- of taking a hardline position with us while telling others that it was the United States that was hardline.

But it isn't just the United States that the D.P.R.K. plays off against. During the decades of Sino-Soviet rivalry, North Korea became adept at playing one off against the other. With the end of the Cold War, North Korea has continued to focus on dealing bilaterally with all of its neighbors, playing them off against each other.

The six-party format helps to deny North Korea the opportunity to play its neighbors off, one against the other. The result is increased understanding and solidarity among the six-party participants about the nature and seriousness of the North Korean nuclear problem.

Preparing for Round Two of Six-Party Talks

As I noted, the second round of Six-Party Talks is less than two weeks away. We will meet in Beijing on February 25, and we expect that the round will result in further progress toward a permanent solution, even if the progress may not be readily apparent.

At the talks, as I have stressed, the aim of the United States will be the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear programs. That is our focus, but we are prepared to listen carefully and respond to all positions.

North Korea has said that its nuclear arms program is a defensive response to the hostility of the Bush Administration, and it has demanded, among other things, security assurances from the United States before it will, as it says, "consider resolving American concerns." I would note that the D.P.R.K.'s HEU program existed long before the Bush Administration was inaugurated. I would also note that President Bush stated as early as February 2002 that the United States has no intention of invading or attacking North Korea. Nevertheless, in an effort to move the process along, President Bush stated last October that the United States was willing to join other participants in the Six-Party Talks in providing security assurances to North Korea in the context of its complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program.

In preparing for the next round, we have consulted especially closely with our allies the Republic of Korea and Japan, both bilaterally and trilaterally. We have also had extensive bilateral consultations with both the P.R.C. and Russia.

President Bush is committed to a diplomatic solution and is convinced that multilateral talks are the appropriate diplomatic forum, for the reasons I have described. We are confident that the Six-Party Talks offer the best opportunity to persuade North Korea to end its nuclear arms program and thereby to open up brighter prospects for the entire region. That is not to say that we expect to resolve the nuclear problem in a matter of a few weeks or even a few months. It is a difficult issue and will take time. But we will take the time necessary to achieve a fundamental and permanent solution.

IAI and PSI to Continue on Their Merits

Meanwhile, the U.S. is currently working with many of North Korea's neighbors in East Asia to enhance law enforcement and judicial cooperation to address North Korea's illicit and criminal activities. North Korea is involved in activities such as counterfeiting, drug-running, and smuggling. We are also working towards implementing the President's Proliferation Security Initiative, a separate program to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles. While not directed at North Korea, North Korea is affected because it is the world's leading proliferator. These initiatives will be continued on their merits.

Conclusion

North Korea has an opportunity to change its path. As some Americans might put it there is a chance for redemption. The examples of Libya, Ukraine, South Africa and others demonstrate that there is real reason for hope that North Korea will eventually respond. States, even those with existing nuclear arms, can decide that abandoning nuclear weapons is in their interests. Presumably, the intention of the D.P.R.K. leadership in embracing nuclear weapons was to enhance the regime's security and status. Clearly, the effect has been the opposite. With continued international solidarity, there is good reason to believe that North Korea will eventually rethink its assumptions and reverse course. The Six-Party Talks offer North Korea a path toward international responsibility and increased well being for its people. The United States sincerely hopes that the D.P.R.K. will take the opportunity.


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Pyongyang's Tightrope-Walker

Marcus Noland
Institute for International Economics

Op-ed in the Far Eastern Economic Review
February 17, 2004

? Institute for International Economics.

North Koreans are justly proud of their acrobats who entertain visiting dignitaries. After hesitating for nearly a decade, the Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong Il, has begun edging unsteadily onto the high wire. The questions are whether he will fall, and if he does, will there be anyone to catch him?

Economic reforms are enabling an upsurge in small-scale economic activity while at the same time deepening social differentiation and creating a new class of urban poor. A "military-first" ideological campaign, emphasizing modernization, has been introduced to legitimate these changes and justify abandoning traditional socialist practices. As government officials are laid off and the military is elevated above the proletariat in the political pantheon, entrepreneurs and officers have replaced bureaucrats and cadres as preferred sons-in-law.

These changes may ultimately prove destabilizing, though the regime can draw upon considerable assets: two generations of political indoctrination without parallel, a monopoly on social organization and a massive apparatus for internal control. Yet even if Kim is able to use these tools to maintain his balance, the reform initiative is unlikely to come to fruition as long as the country remains a pariah, subject to diplomatic sanctions. Recent statistical modelling work suggests that economic performance, and, by extension, North Korea's external relations, have a critical impact on regime stability. It's hard to imagine Kim successfully traversing the rope if foreigners are shaking it.

The six-party talks, scheduled to restart later this month, on the North's nuclear programme are central in this regard. In the short term, Pyongyang's brinkmanship and American election-year timidity could reduce the talks to theatrical sound and fury, signifying nothing. But even if the participants behave like angels, there are ample grounds for scepticism. North Korea regards its nuclear deterrent as critical to its survival and is unlikely to negotiate it away easily. Even recent pro-engagement visitors to Pyongyang have labelled the North Korean "words for resources" stance as a nonstarter. And having been burned once, America is likely to insist on a very rigorous verification regime.

Countries that have surrendered nuclear weapons or eliminated nuclear-weapon development programmes usually have done so in the context of a broader political regime change, often involving a newly empowered democratic regime asserting control over its own military. Libya's recent decision to terminate its nuclear programme is interesting precisely because it deviates from this pattern, instead highlighting its fears of external pressure and the country's own effort to come in from the cold, resolve outstanding diplomatic issues and gain international acceptance. Regrettably, in reaction to Moamar Qaddafi's call for North Korea to emulate Libya, Pyongyang responded that, "This is the folly of imbeciles . . . To expect any 'change' from the DPRK stand is as foolish as expecting a shower from the clear sky."

Yet even if one doubts the prospects of eliminating the North's nuclear programme through negotiation, earnest and sincere American participation in the talks is a necessary precursor for stiffer measures further down the line.

Coercive diplomacy can work only if Kim is deprived of his safety net, and the Bush administration has made little headway with those who hold it. There is no consensus in South Korea about what to do with respect to the North, and unless the electorate shifts strongly towards the opposition in the upcoming national assembly elections, Seoul will try to catch Kim if he falls.

China is weary of Kim's stalling, but is as yet unwilling to drop the net. It fears a flood of North Korean refugees upsetting the ethnic politics of its border provinces and the possibility of American troops north of the 38th parallel in a unified Korea. To secure Chinese cooperation, America will have to offer assurances about the disposition of its troops and a credible system of permanent refugee resettlement to mollify China's political concerns. Proposed legislation making it easier for North Koreans to gain asylum in the United States is a start, but to convince Beijing, it will take money for temporary refugee resettlement camps, not just minor immigration-law changes. Unfortunately, the Bush administration at its outset regarded China as a strategic competitor and was unwilling to pursue such cooperation, and now with Iraq on its hands, lacks the political capital to do so.

So as Washington sways the rope, Seoul and Beijing look apprehensively skyward as a short, tubby man dances through the air.
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Making Sense of the Korean Crisis
An Interview with Gavan McCormack
by Gavan McCormack
February 15, 2004

JAPAN


(Gavan McCormack is author of the just released Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, New York, Nation Books (available at Amazon.com for $11.16). He has published widely on aspects of modern and contemporary East Asia and his books have also been translated into Japanese, Chinese and Korean. A research professor at the Australian National University, he is currently also a visiting professor at International Christian University in Tokyo. He was interviewed via email by Stephen R. Shalom and Mark Selden.)


1. Could you summarize political and economic conditions in North Korea today?

Till the 1980s, North Korea was one of the more industrialized countries in Asia. Thereafter it has been reduced to penury and near-collapse by a combination of circumstances, some the consequence of its own choices, others beyond its control.

With the end of "socialism" in the 1990s, both Russia and China shifted from "friendly" to commercial terms of trade, which meant skyrocketing prices for North Korea's energy imports, especially oil. The country's heavily chemical and machine intensive agriculture suffered a severe blow, on the eve of a succession of unprecedented climatic disasters -- the country became chronically unable to feed its people, and many starved. People were urged to adopt a two-meals-a day regimen, when for many even one became too much to hope for.According to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for North Korea, four out of ten North Korean children are now stunted by malnutrition. In February 2004, the World Food Program, its reserves rapidly diminishing as donor countries lost interest in North Korea, had to cut off supplies for four million aged people, women, and children (more than one sixth of the population).

Blocked by the US and Japan from participation in such multinational institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, denied diplomatic relations with the US and Japan, and subject to sanctions as a "terror-exporting" state, North Korea is also caught on the horns of the dilemma of desiring to engage much more comprehensively with the global economy and fearing that such engagement might undermine its political and security system. The biggest change is in the rapidly burgeoning web of ties that link North Korea across the DMZ to its erstwhile bitterest enemy, booming South Korea.

The hostilities of the Korean War that ended more than fifty years ago are still suspended only by a temporary "cease-fire" and the economy remains distorted by the priority to military preparation. In 1987, soon after North Korea commenced operation of a gas graphite nuclear reactor for power generation, it seems to have begun diverting the plutonium-containing reactor wastes to a weapons program designed to produce its own deterrent, thereby to neutralize the semi-permanent US threat and to bring the US to the negotiating table.

A US attack on its installations was narrowly averted in 1994. North Korea then came close to normalization of relations with the US under the Clinton administration, trading its nuclear weapon and missile programs for economic and diplomatic normalization. The advent of the Bush administration plunged all this back to the starting-line.

For much of its history, since its foundation in 1948, North Korea was a Marxist-Leninist, communist party dictatorship, but since the late 1990s under its "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il (after the death of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994) it abandoned communist theory and embraced the principle of "Army-first-ism," with Kim Jong Il supreme military and political ruler. In place of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the military dictatorship today resembles an absolute monarchy and justifies itself on purely nationalist grounds. Kim Jong Il's control is far reaching. Few other rulers could say as confidently as he: "L'?~t, c'est moi." Political criticism, let alone opposition, is not tolerated, and huge efforts are devoted to controlling people's thoughts from childhood. Dissenters, and their families, most likely numbering somewhere well over 100,000, are confined in harsh camps (gulags) in remote or mountain areas.

Centralized economic controls were largely abandoned in 2002 in favor of the market. Foreign businesses are encouraged to set up in enclaves in the North, and South Korea in particular has responded positively. In the hope of unlocking the doors to normalization with Japan and a flow of Japanese aid and technology, North Korea in September 2002 apologized over the abduction of Japanese citizens in the late 1970s and early 1980s and over "spy-ship" intrusions into Japanese waters, but the Japanese response has been harsh and the overtures thus far fruitless.

No other country faces such a raft of unresolved problems from history. North Korea is a fossilized encapsulation of the 20th century: the legacies of colonialism, imperialist interventions, externally imposed division of the country, and incorporation in the Cold War, all remain unresolved. Economic failures, especially the inability of the regime to feed the people, have gradually sapped the regime's credibility. A steady flow of refugees crosses the river frontier into China, and even some key figures close to the leadership have fled. Nothing so serves to justify and sustain the continued harsh regimen of dictatorship as the confrontation with huge, hostile, external adversaries.


2. At one time North Korea's economy seemed to be growing faster than South Korea's. What's happened?

When the CIA studied the two economies in the late 1960s, it found North Korea out-performing South Korea in almost every particular. From 1979 to 1990, the UN's FAO was reporting North Korea as an agricultural miracle, the world's No 1 in terms of rice yield per hectare. Both reports were dubious, and the accomplishments, such as they were, soon dissolved. Now the GDP gap is between twenty and thirty to one in the South's favor, and North Korea's agriculture has collapsed.

The more industrialized region of the peninsula prior to the Korean War, in the decades that followed liberation from Japan and the foundation (in 1948) of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the North achieved dramatic growth rates fueled by the nationalization of seized Japanese colonial assets, the adoption of a comprehensive land-reform program and of Soviet-style central planning, and substantial aid flows from Soviet, East European and Chinese sources. After the initial high growth of the 1940s to 1960s (with the exception of the drastic setbacks of the war between 1950 and 1953), however, North Korea entered upon a slow decline. Plant rotted or became obsolescent, resources were monopolized by the military, or used to shore up the cult of the leader, and in the 1990s the country was buffeted by the natural disasters of the 1990s, even as the confrontation with the United States sharpened.

The contradiction between the cult and the plan deepened. In effect, the frenzied excesses and arbitrary interventions of the cult slowly strangled the plan; with the succession of Kim Jong Il, flunkeys replaced technocrats. The long US embargo, blocking not only bilateral economic links but also World Bank and International Monetary Fund ties, stymied repeated efforts to break out of isolation.

No country has "de-industrialized" at such a rate and for so long now as North Korea. As a black hole of hopelessness at the heart of booming Northeast Asia, its position is increasingly anomalous.


3. What has been the significance of the fact that the North Korean leadership has passed from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il.

Kim Jong Il (b. 1942) was groomed for succession long before his father Kim Il Sung (b. 1912) actually passed the reins to him. When Kim Il Sung died in 1994, Kim Jong Il was already in effect running the country.

Kim Il Sung had the prestige associated with his role as an anti-Japanese partisan or guerrilla, an anti-fascist fighter. The cult that was built around him rested ultimately on nationalist and internationalist credentials. For Kim Jong Il, however, legitimacy stemmed only from being his father's son. A huge effort had to be launched to legitimize his succession. At his hands, the cult of his father, Kim Il Sung, was intensified and extended to the entire family: continuation of the revolution could only be entrusted to the blood-line. The entire country was turned into a family monument, and grandiose projects in honor of the Leader and his family were given priority over productive purposes.

Kim Jong Il's dilemma is how to reform his country while somehow retaining power. The more he "reforms" and opens the country, however, the less credible his dynastic and feudal rule becomes.


4. In 1994, the Clinton administration reached an agreement with North Korea designed to resolve the nuclear controversy. What happened to that agreement?

Under the 1994 agreement known as the "Agreed Framework," North Korea was to freeze its graphite nuclear reactor program, and to hold its 8,000-odd rods of plutonium-containing waste from the reactors in specially constructed ponds, under sealed IAEA camera scrutiny, in return for two electricity-generating light-water reactors to be built by 2003, and an interim annual supply of 3.3 million barrels of oil. The United States and North Korea agreed to "move towards full normalization of political and economic relations" while the US was to provide "formal assurances to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea against the threat or use of nuclear weapons."

Wrangling over the site and getting the agreement of others to pay for it (South Korea 70 per cent, Japan about 20 per cent) took several years, by which time North Korea was in the depths of economic crisis and famine so severe that Washington believed the regime might not survive and therefore the reactor construction need not go ahead. As control of Congress passed to the Republicans, who had opposed the deal from the start and never took seriously its commitment to political and economic normalization, the Agreed Framework was sidelined and criticized as misguided Democratic appeasement that should never have been entered into and should not be honored. It took the launch (albeit unsuccessful in achieving orbit) of the Taepodong satellite in 1998 to restore a sense of urgency to the North Korea question. In 2000, visits were exchanged by Madeleine Albright and North Korea's Marshall Jo Myong Rok and the two countries came to the brink of normalization and to fulfillment of the Framework's commitments. A Clinton presidential visit was anticipated, but time ran out before it could be realized.

Under President Bush, North Korea was labeled a "terror state" and evil, its leader the particular object of presidential hatred. The present crisis was initiated in October 2002 by US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly's claim that North Korea had admitted to a secret program of uranium enrichment. Allegation and denial brought the Framework to collapse. What actually was said to Kelly, and whether he understood it correctly or not, remains controversial. Pyongyang denies any admission. China, Russia and South Korea doubt that North Korea has the kind of program it is supposed to have admitted. It is hard to imagine any possible motive for North Korea to have said what Kelly alleges was said.

From 2003, the uranium enrichment story was complicated by the admissions stemming from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program, to the provision of nuclear technology, including centrifuges, to Libya, Iran, North Korea and other countries in the 1990s. This breach of the non-proliferation regime is precisely what Washington says it most fears North Korea might commit. Committed by a US ally, and almost certainly known to US intelligence from the outset, however, it elicits little more than a reprimand.

The next round of "Six-Sided Talks" in Beijing, scheduled for late February 2004, will have to confront the issue of who said what, and what they meant, in Pyongyang in October 2002.

Whatever the outcome of the uranium enrichment story, it seems beyond doubt that, until the Kelly-initiated crisis and the ensuing breakdown of the Agreed Framework, North Korea had honored its commitment to freeze the graphite-moderated reactor works and waste storage ponds at Yongbyon. The 1994 Agreement covered the plutonium-based (Nagasaki-type) weapons program, not the uranium-based (Hiroshima-type) program that became the subject of the Kelly allegations in 2002 and the Khan revelations in 2003. US experts visiting Yongbyon in December 2003 found that one small (5 MW) experimental reactor had been turned on to provide the local town with power and heat, but the larger (50 MW) reactor works were in such a state of dilapidation and disrepair that they estimated it would take years to restore. The storage ponds were empty, however, suggesting that the plutonium had been processed and might be incorporated in a weapons program.


5. During the run-up to the Iraq war, many commentators noted that whether or not Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he was rational and hence deterrable, and thus not a serious threat outside his own borders. Indeed, these commentators suggested that the only conceivable scenario in which Saddam might use WMD was in the event of a US attack. Does this same logic apply to North Korea?

No serious analyst has ever suggested that North Korea was preparing to attack or invade any of its neighbors or constituted any threat to regional peace except if faced with threats to its own survival. North Korea is best seen as a porcupine, stiffening its bristles and looking fierce to try to repel attack, rather than a tiger rapaciously seeking prey.

Although North Korea has neither threatened nor committed any act of aggression against any neighboring state, its relationship with South Korea is of course in a different category. Ever since the country was divided by external intervention in 1945, both North and South have committed themselves to restoring national unity, each claiming national legitimacy. The civil war of 1950 to 1953 arose out of that contest and fifty years on remains unresolved, but the momentum of reconciliation between the two has accelerated greatly since the shift from confrontation to "sunshine" under the previous South Korean presidency of Kim Dae Jung. South Korean people today are more fearful of the United States than of North Korea.


6. Are the North Koreans paranoid? And, if so, why?

If paranoia means unreasonable, groundless, or grossly exaggerated fear, then the word is inappropriate to describe North Korea, whose fears can hardly be described as unreasonable.

While in Washington the North Korean "nuclear threat" has been an issue for the past decade, Pyongyang has faced the US nuclear threat for the past half century. North Korea has lived under it for longer than any other nation. During the Korean War it escaped nuclear annihilation by the barest of margins. General MacArthur, his successor as Commander-in-Chief, General Ridgway, presidents Truman and Eisenhower, and the Joint Chiefs, all at one or other stage favored or recommended using nuclear weapons against North Korea. Britain and other allies opposed its use, but in the end it was only fear of Soviet retaliation, and following the death of Stalin the rapid progress in negotiations, that prevented it. Then, just four years after the Armistice and in obvious breach of it, the US introduced nuclear artillery shells, mines, and missiles into Korea, keeping them there, adjacent to the Demilitarized Zone, designed to intimidate the non-nuclear North, for 35 years till they were finally withdrawn at the insistence of the South Korean government. Even withdrawal did little to diminish the threat as perceived by Pyongyang since the rehearsals for a long-range nuclear strike on North Korea continued. Under the "Agreed Framework," however, Clinton finally lifted the threat, pledging no first-use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. That reprieve was in turn revoked under Bush and North Korea was specifically included on the "Nuclear Target List."

Watching its fellow "axis of evil" country Iraq being pulverized in 2003 although (as we now know) it had no weapons of mass destruction nor any immediate prospect of developing them, Pyongyang could be forgiven for concluding that its turn was likely to come next, and that its only hope of survival was actually to possess what Saddam Hussein had not. Without nuclear weapons North Korea was a poor and insignificant country; with them, perhaps only with them, it might not only deter American attack but actually induce it to enter negotiations on long-standing grievances.

North Korea's perception of its role in the 20th century (and the 21st to date) is that of victim, suffering from a series of colossal and uncompensated injustices at the hands of colonial Japan and the US. Its demands for lifting of the threat against it and for recognition and normalization may be voiced in strident tones, but that is best seen as a measure of its anxiety. What the world has never recognized is the core of legitimacy in Pyongyang's cry for settlement: of the bitter legacy of colonialism (from Japan) and of nuclear intimidation, economic embargo and diplomatic isolation (by the US).


7. What is the role and position of the key regional players in the current North Korea crisis: South Korea, Japan, and China?

The "Six-Sided Framework" set up during 2003 was designed to present North Korea with a united front of regional and global powers (US, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea) insisting on its nuclear disarmament. As the crisis has developed, however, the US position has steadily weakened and the Six-Sided frame has served to bring pressure, unexpectedly, to bear on Washington as much as on North Korea. Strangest of all, China, designated by the early Bush administration as the real strategic threat to the United States, moved to centre stage in the negotiations.

All six of the countries are committed to a non-nuclear peninsula, and, save for the US, all consider the idea of another war in Northeast Asia absolutely anathema. While none dare openly oppose the US, North Korea's four neighbor countries share the belief that its security problems are genuine and serious, and that North Korea should be entitled, without having to plead for it, to the guarantee of its right to exist. All express doubts about the US intelligence on North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons, and about the US version of the events that led to the collapse of the Agreed Framework in 2002.

South Korea: South Korea, which once fought a fratricidal war and has been locked in hostile military confrontation with the North ever since, now shows least fear and most understanding of its neighbor and has chosen a path of dialogue and cooperation, a policy styled by former President Kim Dae Jung as "Sunshine," stemming from a vein of Confucian wisdom in which human nature is seen as complex but never evil, and in which even the poor, desperate and friendless are entitled to respect. It chooses to believe that change is in the cards and any residual military threat is adequately contained, and shows no sympathy for the moralistic, fundamentalist frame within which North Korea is represented as "evil." Ultimately, as one critic put it, South and North Korea constitute a single "family business."

At any given moment now, hundreds of South Korean diplomats, bureaucrats, and business people are in Pyongyang, doing deals, talking to their opposite numbers, working out new links by road, rail, fiber-optic or pipeline between North and South, or framing investment projects in energy, tourism or manufacturing.

Japan: Korea was Japan's colony in the first half of the 20th century. Japanese dominance was followed by externally imposed division, civil and then international war, and then the Cold War. It took 20 years before Japan made any move to "normalize" its relations with South Korea, and to this day no relations exist with North Korea.

Under Cold war conditions, it was more-or-less impossible even to imagine reconciliation between Japan and North Korea. After it, North Korea's demand for apology and compensation for colonialism was the major sticking point. Only when enfeebled to the point of desperation by economic crisis in the 1990s did it agree to set that demand aside. North Korea also showed its eagerness for change when it offered visiting Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi in September 2002 a dramatic apology for having abducted thirteen Japanese citizens during the late 1970s and early 1980s and for the "spy ships" that intruded into Japanese waters in the 1990s. It then returned to Japan the five it said were the survivors of the thirteen people abducted. These indications of desire for change came to naught, however. Instead, a huge Japanese wave of anger over the abductions overshadowed all else.

The abductions of two and a half decades ago, at the height of the Cold War, were a form of state terrorism, and outrage was understandable. However, the Japanese response was itself strange, in that it followed the North Korean apology and promise not to commit such acts again. Furthermore, both sides were well aware that Japan had undertaken state terror in the not so distant past on a much larger scale, including the mobilization of large numbers of Korean young women into sexual slavery, and that it took Japan more than half a century before it began, grudgingly, to admit and to make reparation (indirectly and inadequately).

The question of the six children of the former abductees became central. Now in all cases adults (the youngest aged 18), brought up entirely in North Korea, knowing no language but Korean and in some cases ignorant even of the Japanese identity of their parents, the Japanese government nevertheless insisted that they be handed over, "returned" to Japan. North Korea, for its part, protested that Japan was in breach of an October 2002 understanding to the effect that the parents would return to North Korea after a one or two week stay in Japan to determine the future of their families. It argued that the children were not "things" to be simply shifted around, but human beings with their own sense of identity; it should be up to them to decide, after discussion with their parents, where they want to live.

The North Korean government continued in 2003 and 2004 to reiterate essentially the same position. To a visiting Japanese government delegation in February 2004 it said that if the parents would only fly to Pyongyang, thus fulfilling the terms of the bargain, the family members could, if they wished, then depart with them. That was not enough to satisfy the Japanese authorities, who remained bent on unconditional handover of the family members, regardless of what the individuals in question might think. The long-term solution in human rights terms would be the creation of a relationship in which these young people would be able to move freely between North Korea and Japan, between their own (should they so choose) and their parents' homes in a future "normalized" relationship, but such a position has very few supporters in contemporary Japan.

The continuing showdown with North Korea constituted a major axis of political and institutional change in Japan. With fear and hatred of North Korea a shared social consensus, Japan has taken a series of recent steps towards "normalizing" its military ("Self-Defense") forces and strengthening its support for the US military in its global operations. Prime Minister Koizumi specifically linked the Self-Defense Force detachment sent to Iraq to the expectation that the US would defend Japan in the event of a North Korean attack. Japan has also committed itself to purchase of a massively expensive and unproven (US) missile defense system to ward off any North Korean missiles, tightened the rules governing the entry of North Korean ships into Japanese waters, and passed legislation to authorize unilateral economic sanctions on North Korea if it judged the situation to warrant it.

China: China has the closest of historic ties with North Korea and is today both the source of most of the supplies of food and energy on which North Korea depends and the most likely possible model of how it might develop in the future; in the North Korean present, Chinese see their own past. The Chinese role in brokering a resolution of the problem of North Korea has steadily grown, at the US request. The Chinese "bottom line" is that there must not be any resort to force. China was bold enough to say, from its position as convener and chair of the Beijing August 2003 talks, that it was the US that was the major obstacle to the negotiations. Steady Chinese pressure since then has been instrumental in bringing the US to soften its position. From absolute refusal to negotiate until North Korea agreed unilaterally to a complete, verifiable, irreversible end to its nuclear programs (at the three meetings that took place in 2002 and 2003), the US in late 2003 indicated it was ready to offer some kind of security guarantee and to consider graduated steps to resolution. China has also been instrumental in persuading North Korea to come to the table again without the draft document it sought in advance and to agree to a freeze (and ultimately destruction) of all its nuclear programs, not only weapons-related ones.

China has long disputed US intelligence estimates about North Korea and has stated in advance of the February meeting that it is not persuaded of the central American claim about North Korea's possession of a uranium enrichment program. On this, given the record of US intelligence and its manipulation on Iraq, Washington will have a hard time persuading its negotiating partners in Beijing. Any successful resolution of the current problem is likely to enhance China's role as the lynchpin of a future East or Northeast Asian order, with the "Six" constituting the core of a future community.


8. Does anyone know what the status is of North Korea's weapons programs? Can you summarize what we do know.

American intelligence first estimated back in 1993 (possibly earlier) that North Korea had "one, or possibly two" nuclear weapons. Like the intelligence on which the US in 2003 went to war against Iraq, it seems to have been false and/or subject to political manipulation. By 2003, the US had shifted to adopt the South Korean, Russian and Chinese view that North Korea actually did not have any nuclear weapons. It then argued that it had the ingredients (plutonium and uranium), and the will and intent, to develop them.

It is almost certainly true that North Korea would like to have nuclear weapons, its own "deterrent," but also that it suspended its efforts to produce them when it felt its security needs were satisfactorily met by the Agreed Framework in 1994, only changing course when the US itself changed course from Clinton to Bush. North Korea today almost certainly has plutonium, and may be in the process of extracting more of it from the waste rods removed from the Yongbyon ponds, but it seems highly unlikely that it has achieved "weaponization." As for delivery system, the Nodong missile has been test fired only once, in 1993; the longer-range Taepodong likewise once, when it failed to achieve orbit and crashed into the ocean in 1998; and the supposedly improved model, Taepodong 2, also once, when it blew up on the launching pad in 2002 (according to South Korean intelligence). It is hardly a scintillating record.

Objective assessment is complicated by the fact that both US intelligence and Pyongyang share an interest, for different reasons, in having the world think North Korea possesses both nuclear weapons and a delivery system, the US in order to justify its hegemonic role in East Asia, and North Korea in order to deter US attack.


9. What is the Bush administration currently trying to achieve with respect to North Korea?

The use of the singular begs a major question: does the Bush administration have a policy or is North Korea the axis of contest between rival factions within it. Jack Pritchard, till his resignation in August 2003 a Senior North Korean specialist at the State Department, says of American policy (New York Times, 21 January 2004): "At best it could be described only as amateurish. At worst, it is a failed attempt to lure American allies down a path that is not designed to solve the crisis diplomatically but to lead to the failure and ultimate isolation of North Korea in hopes that its government will collapse." No outside critic could match the severity of this assessment by someone who has been deeply involved in policy implementation.

For the neo-conservative group within the Bush regime, whether in the 1990s or today, history and politics are less important than the moral frame. North Korea is evil and should be liberated. Where political, economic and historical differences can be negotiated, evil can only be stamped out. Bush himself has made no secret of his loathing for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, in terms similar to those he used for Saddam Hussein. He has, however, also intimated, in quite contrary mode, that a peaceful, negotiated solution in Korea is possible and even expressed optimism about the prospects. As the mire in Iraq deepens, a more conventional diplomatic view of the North Korean problem again comes to the fore in Washington. In very crude terms, while the neoconservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld prefer ultimatum, backed by the readiness to use force, and the president himself is disinclined for compromise, the State Department favors negotiation and cooperation with regional powers.

The current US position -- readiness to meet North Korea's security concerns by some form of document and to offer economic aid in return for complete, verifiable and irreversible abandonment of its nuclear programs -- is a big step forward from that enunciated by James Kelly in 2002 and 2003. Indeed on the face of it this is close to what North Korea seeks (though it fudges the key issue of full diplomatic normalization). However, the 25 February Beijing meet will face some major obstacles:
1. How to arrive at a mutually satisfactory text to guarantee North Korea's security;

2. How to establish the truth about the claims and counter-claims concerning an enriched uranium program;

3. How to address the North Korean demand for deletion from the list of terror-supporting countries;

4. How to persuade the US to accept the North Korean "freeze" as sufficient warrant of good faith to justify the resumption of shipments of heavy oil in the short term, and an end to the virtual economic embargo of North Korea in the long term;

5. How in the longer term, to persuade all sides that the issue to be settled is not merely a putative North Korean weapons program but normalization of relations on all sides;

6. How to incorporate in that normalization a permanent peace agreement to settle the Korean war of 1950-53;

7. How to resolve the issue of North Korean abductions of Japanese, and simultaneously the issues of Japanese abductions and abuse of Koreans during the long colonial period.

It is the agenda not just of nuclear weapons on the peninsula but of the accumulated problems of a century, and therefore almost certainly too much to be settled in a few late February days. Pyongyang may be calculating to survive until November by stringing out the negotiations in the hope of facing a more amenable US government following the November elections, while the US, weakened by events in Iraq, will not find it easy to persuade the world to adopt its intelligence estimates and is in no position to resort to force in the short term.


10. How would you assess the Bush administration's strategy?

Two major contradictions affect US North Korea policy, nuclear on the one hand, strategic on the other.

The US wants to maintain nuclear-based hegemony over the earth, and indeed over the universe, while blocking any new countries from joining the existing nuclear club. The non-proliferation regime to which it signed up in 1968 was a deal by which those countries that did not possess nuclear weapons pledged not to take steps to get them, while those with weapons pledged not to threaten non-possessors and to take steps to eliminate their existing arsenals and move to comprehensive nuclear disarmament. Until the nuclear club powers take seriously those obligations, their insistence on others fulfilling their obligations is mere hypocrisy. If security can indeed only be guaranteed by possession of nuclear weapons, then there can be no complaint at North Korea. If that is not the case, then the possessing powers must take steps towards elimination of all nuclear weapons.

The second contradiction is between short and long-term US objectives. Regime change in North Korea would remove a thorn in the US side, but at the same time it might serve to undermine US regional hegemony. George W. Bush and Kim Jong Il stand in a paradoxically symbiotic relationship. Bush's loathing for Kim, and his nuclear threat, maintains the isolation and siege conditions that allow Kim to legitimize his rule, mobilize nationalist support, and crush opposition. Bush, for his part, rules and reigns over Northeast Asia because Japan and South Korea feel compelled by the North Korean threat to seek American protection and to shelter under Washington's "nuclear umbrella."

The framework of US military presence in East Asia is justified in Seoul and Tokyo by the threat from Pyongyang. Without the "North Korean threat" -- whether resolved peacefully or otherwise -- Washington strategists would have to think of some new justification for the bases in Japan and South Korea, and for the massively expensive anti-missile system soon to be constructed in the region. Some might want to declare China the real enemy, but a military alliance with the United States whose orientation was containment and hostility towards China would find little support in contemporary South Korea and Japan. Paradoxically, if the US does accomplish what it wants in North Korea -- regime change -- it could find that its own domination of the region is undermined.

It is time for the US to grow beyond the Cold War assumptions of Asia as a threatening and yet economically crucial area that must be maintained under tight control. In time, Asia, especially East and Northeast Asia, most likely in close cooperation with Southeast Asia, will emerge as an autonomous global centre of power and wealth. The process is, indeed, already advanced. The security reliance on the chain of US bases and on Washington's priorities becomes increasingly anomalous.

North Korea is a tiny country that has successively been colonized, invaded and abandoned. Its neighbors are the booming core of the world economy. Incorporated into "normal' relations with them, North Korea could be expected to become increasingly like them. North Korea's neighbors have their reasons for wanting to incorporate North Korea into the emerging Asian community and should be encouraged to take the key role in doing so on their own terms. To accomplish this, the price North Korea seeks for abandoning its nuclear weapons program is not unreasonable: an end to nuclear intimidation, diplomatic normalization and removal of economic sanctions.

It would be sensible for the US, while maintaining the existing security guarantees to both South Korea and Japan, to give North Korea the chance to show if it really does wish to change. Kim Jong Il's avowed desire for opening and normalization should be tested. He should be invited to talks in Washington or Tokyo or anywhere else and his willingness to denuclearize put to the test. Attempts to enforce change by issuing demands and refusing negotiation simply will not work. North Korean "face" is an important part of the security equation and a sympathy for the pain and the sense of justice that drive it, however perverted, will be needed for security goals to be met. Kim Jong Il's rule feeds off the current tension and he would not long survive the process of whittling it away, the normalization of economic and political relations with Japan and the US, and the steady flow of Japanese and other capital into the country.

Above all, a resolution of the problem will depend on seeing it not in the narrow frame of North Korean threat but in the broad context of history. That will require taking Seoul seriously and with respect, rather than as a recalcitrant and scarcely reliable ally because it no longer follows Washington uncritically. North Korea is essentially a Korean problem, and South Korea must assume a central role in negotiations and plans for the future because its people must after all live with their northern compatriots.


11. How does the U.S.-NK impasse impact on issues of peace and security in Northeast Asia? Are there regional approaches to any of the issues that could prove fruitful in resolving the issues both of U.S.-NK conflict and moving toward a reduction of regional tensions?

North Korea is a structural pivot of contemporary US hegemony in East Asia. Washington's post-Cold War vision asks Japan and Korea, in effect, to accept a future world predicated on continued fear and hostility to North Korea, such as to require their continuing military, political, and economic dependence on the United States. For Japan, the role of the "Britain" of East Asia is on offer, and its actions in Iraq suggest that Koiziumi's Japan is keen to take up the offer. For South Korea, or a united Korea, no clear role has yet been articulated, but one thing is clear: it is expected to remain secondary to Japan, perhaps as a kind of East Asian Northern Ireland. However, while US regional and global policy offers negative priorities -- anti-terror, anti-"evil," security against North Korea -- from East Asia there are tentative signs of the emergence of an alternative, non-imperial vision. Beyond the gloom, anger, and rising tension of the "North Korean crisis" may be detected a process of evolution in a "European" type direction. Like Europe, however, East Asia has its own rhythms and its own dynamics, and its tectonic plates are moving towards greater mutual cooperation and community. People begin to ask why it is that East Asia in the twentieth century failed to evolve a concert of states other than the Japanese-dominated "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" in the first half and then the US-dominated "free world" in the latter half, the former disastrous, the latter originally a Cold War product, and increasingly anomalous as the conditions that gave it birth disappear. Offered ongoing dependency on the US, structured around bilateral treaty arrangements and trade flows rather than any regional consensus, and marked by a base structure meant to last till well into the century ahead, the peoples and states of East Asia are likely at some point to reply: no thank you. Permanent East Asian dependence on American markets and security guarantees looks more and more anachronistic. Looking at the evolution of postwar Europe, people ask why Asia should not follow a similar path.

The Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea is indefensible, but violent intervention to change it is more likely to lead to the sort of chaos that engulfs Iraq and Afghanistan than to a resolution of problems that, in the last resort, only the Korean people, north and south, can solve. The necessary condition for them to do this is the "normalization" of the Korean peninsula, with problems ignored for far too long finally addressed: the lack of any peace treaty to settle the Korean War, the absence of diplomatic relations between North Korea and the world's two most important countries, the US and Japan. Only then will it be possible to liquidate the militarized tension that has blighted the lives of North Korea's people for half a century and created the conditions within which the dictatorship sustains itself.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=17&ItemID=4992
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Guess who's in the driver's seat? Not the US
By Larry Niksch
(Used by permission of Pacific Forum CSIS)
See also: Round 2: In search of a US policy
As the second round of the six-party North Korea talks opens on Wednesday in Beijing, guess who's in the driver's seat? It's not Washington - not by a long shot.
A look back to February 2003 can leave one astounded over the diplomatic fortunes of the two chief antagonists. A year ago, North Korea appeared headed toward the status of an isolated international pariah through its brazen actions and threats, self-destructive to the impoverished nation and genuinely menacing and destabilizing to its neighbors and the region.
The United States had seemed to be ascendant. It issued communiques with other concerned neighbors and nations criticizing North Korea's actions. It succeeded in securing six-party talks. At the first six-party meeting in Beijing last August, a US official declared: "We're letting them dig their own grave." The administration of US President George W Bush said North Korea was self-destructing and was alienating the other participants. US officials spoke confidently of securing China's support. Today, US administration officials remain emboldened, citing Libya's decision to give up weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as the example for North Korea to follow.
However, a broader look does not appear to support the Bush administration's optimistic analysis. North Korean diplomacy has placed key items of Pyongyang's agenda at the top of the negotiating agenda: North Korea's proposal for a formal non-aggression security guarantee from the US, and Pyongyang's proposed freeze of its plutonium program. China, South Korea and Russia speak positively of these proposals and declare that the United States must address North Korea's concerns. Japan alone seconds the US position that North Korea must commit first to a "complete, irreversible, verifiable" dismantling of its nuclear programs and take concrete measures toward that end.
Expressions of skepticism about US claims of a secret North Korean highly enriched uranium (HEU) program now come from Chinese, Russian and South Korean officials. North Korea is receiving cash (US$50 million in October) and increased fuel and food from China, economic aid from South Korea, and further economic aid from Russia. Even the Bush administration has offered North Korea "security assurances", which would be more concessionary than the nuclear-security guarantee offered in the 1994 Agreed Framework.
North Korea's successes are the result of a negotiating strategy that plays on the psychological fears of the other parties coupled with a concerted propaganda strategy to advance Pyongyang's agenda.
Pyongyang's skillful negotiating strategy
After each of the Beijing meetings, North Korea criticized the sessions and the US position, warning that it saw no usefulness in the meetings and probably would not participate again. Then after repeated warnings, North Korea made "new" proposals. After the April meeting, North Korea hammered away on its proposal for a formal US-North Korean non-aggression pact. After the August meeting, North Korea proposed a "freeze" of its plutonium nuclear program, while asserting that a non-aggression guarantee was necessary to prevent the Bush administration from staging an "Iraq-like" unilateral attack.
Pyongyang contended that a freeze was a logical "first stage", employing enticing slogans such as "simultaneous actions", "action vs action", "simultaneous package deal", "bold concession" and "non-interference in our economic development". While promoting these proposals, North Korea steadily escalated the denials of any uranium-enrichment program.
Other governments, apprehensive over North Korea's threat to abandon the talks, sought to react positively in order to persuade Pyongyang to agree to future meetings. President Bush acceded to China's overtures to offer multilateral security assurances. China began to press for a freeze as an integral part of any agreement. Public and elite opinions in China and South Korea reacted favorably to North Korea's proposals, clearly influenced by Pyongyang's propaganda. These positive reactions inevitably have led others to question US positions, including the claim of a secret North Korean uranium-enrichment program.
North Korea has been able to exploit weaknesses in US strategy. The Bush administration's unwillingness to offer detailed, comprehensive settlement proposals has given Pyongyang an open playing field to advance its proposals into a dominant position in the talks. Other governments have nothing to respond to - other than Pyongyang's proposals. North Korea is not pressured to make a fundamental policy choice.
The US administration's reliance on China as a partner also has contributed to North Korea's successes. China has worked hard to organize the talks and has urged the United States to issue comprehensive settlement proposals. However, China has tilted toward North Korea on substantive issues. The question of what China wants as an outcome remains unanswered. Is it a complete termination of North Korea's nuclear program or an agreement with more limited obligations? Without a credible answer to this question, the US reliance on China has proved to be an unstable foundation.
Lack of US response strengthens North Korea
The absence of a US response to North Korea's propaganda strategy also has contributed significantly to Pyongyang's strengthened position. The Bush administration rejected North Korea's non-aggression pact and nuclear-freeze proposals but did not challenge their substance so as to bring into the open their negative features and hidden agenda. The administration's response to the non-aggression-pact proposal was to contend that the Senate would not ratify it. Its response to North Korea's denials of an HEU program was that North Korea admitted to it in October 2002.
This creates at best the perception of a "he said she said" dispute. The administration hopes that the alleged confession of Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan will contain the growing skepticism. However, North Korea already charges that Khan's confession was coerced, and the administration offers no evidence of its own of North Korea's alleged HEU program.
North Korea's strengthened position in the six-party talks puts two related outcomes within reach of Pyongyang - continued talks with pressure on the US to accept a nuclear freeze or the eventual collapse of the talks altogether.
One outcome would be an agenda in future meetings that emphasizes pressure from the other governments on the United States to accept an agreement for a limited nuclear freeze - that would be designated as a "first phase" but in reality would stand alone, with other phases to be determined through an undefined diplomatic process. The Bush administration likely would reject such pressure, but the result probably would be an erosion and eventual end of the six-party talks. Public opinion likely would blame the US for the collapse or would perceive "moral equivalency" between the US and North Korea.
This second outcome - collapse of the talks - would free North Korea from the threat of international sanctions, assure continued economic support from China and South Korea, and give North Korea more options in advancing its nuclear and missile programs - including an open demonstration of nuclear capabilities with reduced risk of punitive measures from neighboring states. If growing North Korean confidence transformed itself into overconfidence, North Korea might be tempted to proliferate WMD in high-risk ways.
The big question in the Wednesday meeting is whether the Bush administration can regain a dominant position for the US over the negotiating agenda or whether North Korea will make further progress toward these outcomes.

Larry Niksch (lniksch@crs.loc.gov) is a specialist in Asian Affairs at the US Congressional Research Service. The opinions expressed are his own. This article is used by permission of Pacific Forum CSIS.)

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Six-party talks, Round 2: In search of a US policy
By Alan D Romberg
(Used by permission of Pacific Forum CSIS)
See also:Guess who's in the driver's seat? Not the US
On the eve of the second round of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, reports indicate the the United States will "barely sweeten" the position it took at the first round last August. and it will repeat its mantra: "no rewards for bad behavior" - but it won't do much more.
Senior foreign-policy advisers to President George W Bush reportedly have decided to reject Pyongyang's offer of a freeze on plutonium-related facilities as "woefully inadequate". They point to North Korea's refusal so far to acknowledge, much less commit to eliminate, an alternative highly enriched uranium (HEU) program to produce fissile material.
If accurate, this demonstrates once again that the Bush administration lacks a serious policy for moving the North Korean nuclear issue from its current sorry - and increasingly dangerous - state toward resolution. The administration seems unable to get past the rhetoric of "complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement" of North Korea's nuclear-weapons program so as to develop a workable strategy to achieve that important goal. Rather, as one official recently put it, the objective of the coming talks is simply to tread water, keeping North Korea at the table. "The motto is ' Do no harm,'" he said.
South Korea's ambassador to the United States has taken a more sensible - and potentially productive - approach. He has observed that "the second round of talks can make progress even if North Korea does not admit the existence of a highly enriched uranium program, as long as the North does not bar discussion of that issue". In other words, rather than forcing confession or denial, the next round should leave the door open to progress through negotiation - while the Bush administration seems to view real negotiation without a prior confession by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the role of "diplomacy", therefore, as one official put it, merely as "a placeholder to get us through the [November US presidential] election".
The "father" of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has reportedly confessed to providing elements of a uranium-enrichment program to North Korea. After presenting this evidence to others in the negotiations, it is perfectly reasonable for the United States to confront North Korea with that same information - and insist that inconsistencies between North Korea's denials and Khan's information be cleared up.
US policy simplistic, lacks understanding
But while it may be a good debating point to argue that Pyongyang should simply follow Libya's example (which - in Bush's own words - came only after nine months of intense negotiation) and unilaterally announce a policy reversal, reliance on that line demonstrates once again the lack of any deep understanding of North Korea or a seriousness of purpose about actually resolving the problem.
US officials will reportedly be explicit in their demands of Pyongyang, but far less concrete about what North Korea can expect in return. Why? In part because some believe the DPRK is under unbearable economic stress from sanctions and on the verge of collapse and will have to capitulate. They also argue for US vagueness because even if the uranium-enrichment program is acknowledged, there is disagreement within the US government about what to offer Pyongyang, in what order, on what timetable.
Beyond insistence on "not rewarding bad behavior", some officials argue, for example, that it is not sensible to grant the DPRK's request for security assurances - which takes but a moment - in exchange merely for a commitment to dismantle the nuclear program - by necessity a long-term process. Others note, however, that Pyongyang can argue that once it dismantles its program, it cannot quickly - if ever - reconstitute it, whereas a security assurance can be withdrawn in an instant, so offering such an assurance would cost the US little and yet be a useful inducement.
While Washington dithers, North Korea is proceeding with its nuclear-weapons program at a pace probably slower than Pyongyang claims but perhaps faster than Washington perceives. Recent visitors to the DPRK saw evidence that, at the least, spent fuel previously in safe storage is no longer there - fuel judged sufficient for five or six nuclear weapons. Moreover, the status of the HEU program is totally unknown.
The question is not whether the US is right to seek the total abolition of North Korea's nuclear program, including both its plutonium- and uranium-based components. Obviously it is. The issue is whether Washington has a coherent policy realistically designed to achieve that goal. So far the evidence is not encouraging.

Alan D Romberg is senior associate and director of the East Asia Program at the Henry L Stimson Center in Washington, DC. He can be reached at aromberg@earthlink.net. This article is used by permission of Pacific Forum CSIS.
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North Korea balks, then agrees to talk. Why now?
By Tom Tobback
BEIJING - "Time is not on the American side," said North Korea's vice foreign minister, Kim Gye-gwan, to Jack Pritchard, the former United States negotiator with North Korea, when he visited the Yongbyon nuclear facilities in North Korea last month. And, Kim added: "As time passes, our nuclear deterrent continues to grow in quantity and quality."
Indeed, time is not on the US side in this nuclear standoff. However, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea's (DPRK's) recent and rather surprising announcement that it has agreed to resume the six-party talks in Beijing on February 25 indicates that time is not entirely on North Korea's side either.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il agreed in principle to participate in a second round of six-party talks when China's Number 2 leader, chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress Wu Bangguo, visited him in Pyongyang last October. The DPRK had described the first round of talks that took place in Beijing last August as a waste of time.
So to ensure progress in the second round of talks, which involve North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US, Pyongyang demanded - and has been demanding - agreement on a joint statement before the talks. This proviso was supported by China after US President George W Bush stated he was willing to discuss a written multilateral security guarantee. However, in December Pyongyang announced additional conditions for its proposed first step, a re-freeze of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities that had been under inspection from 1994 to 2002 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The US accused North Korea of setting preconditions for the talks, and the six-party process seemed to have hit a deadlock. Then suddenly last week the official (North) Korea Central News Agency announced, "The DPRK and the US, the major parties concerned to the six-way talks, and China, the host country, agreed to resume the next round of the six-way talks from February 25 after having a series of discussion."
Officials in Seoul said that the DPRK had not bothered to notify the US or South Korea before announcing this decision.
Pyongyang drops precondition, scope limited
Pyongyang has obviously dropped its demand for a pre-talks joint statement. At the talks, North Korea will expectedly elaborate on its known proposal for "simultaneous actions" and the other parties will then respond. Thus the scope is minimal, and that is probably why the duration of the talks has not yet been announced. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov warned not to expect any breakthrough, given the disagreement over the proposed joint pre-talks statement.
North Korea has done its best to convince the US of its nuclear deterrent by showing the recent private US delegation reprocessed plutonium at Yongbyon, and DPRK officials reportedly were disappointed when US nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker told them he had seen nothing that convinced him Pyongyang possesses a nuclear deterrent.
On the other hand, Pyongyang assured the delegation it does not have the uranium enrichment program US intelligence claims to know about. Possibly North Korea wants to capitalize on doubts about the Bush administration's use of intelligence. Last week KCNA stated: "Now the Bush administration finds itself in a tight corner as it provoked a war against Iraq after deceiving Americans and the world."
Other recent events might have also have convinced Pyongyang that a continuing crisis does not serve its interests. The US-led international consortium KEDO (Korea Energy Development Organization) responsible for building the two light-water reactors in exchange for the freeze of Yongbyon in 1994, halted work on the project on December 1.
After Libya vowed to dismantle its secret nuclear program on December 22, evidence is emerging of a nuclear black market run by the Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who admitted last week to having passed nuclear secrets to various countries - including the DPRK.
Japan threatens economic sanctions
Other incentives to North Korea are the desperate state of the country's population and its economy. The Japanese parliament's decision last week to allow the government to impose economic sanctions and halt trade between the two neighboring countries could hurt the DPRK's economy severely.
According to the deputy director of the DPRK Finance Ministry, Yang Chang-yoon, Pyongyang does need outside assistance and loans to resuscitate its economy, despite the issuance of state bonds last year. One of North Korea's first demands is to be removed from the US list of terrorism-sponsoring nations and to be allowed to join international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Today the UN World Food Program (WFP) in Beijing warned that its cereal stocks in North Korea are all but depleted, with little donations in the pipeline. "We are scraping the bottom of the barrel," Masood Hyder, the WFP's representative in Pyongyang, told a news conference here. "Over four million core beneficiaries - the most vulnerable children, women and elderly people - are now deprived of very vital rations. It's the middle of the harsh Korean winter and they need more food, not less."
Some observers argue that Pyongyang's decision to resume the six-party talks is the result of external political and economic pressure. On the other hand, having the talks take place during the current uproar over the uses of US intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction might enable Pyongyang to keep its alleged uranium-based nuclear program off the table - at least in this round. However, if Pyongyang is not prepared to make further major concessions at the talks, the six-party process is likely to derail.
After his latest visit to the DPRK's Yongbyon nuclear facilities, US negotiator Jack Pritchard brought up a scenario in which this could exactly be Pyongyang's intention, or at least a realistic option. Pritchard is concerned that the talks will fail and that Pyongyang will withdraw from the diplomatic process. If it then declares it has produced all the nuclear weapons it needs and does not intend to make more, China, South Korea, and Russia might accept this as a status quo, arguing the threat is minimal. This would dissolve the six-party process, and would leave the region a lot less secure.

Tom Tobback is the creator and editor of Pyongyang Square, a website dedicated to providing independent information on North Korea. He is based in Beijing.

http://www.pyongyangsquare.com/

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)


>> kcna...
KCNA Blasts U.S. Smear Campaign against DPRK
Pyongyang, February 21 (KCNA) -- The United States is persistently spreading a false rumor about the "transfer of nuclear technology" to the DPRK by a Pakistani scientist in a bid to make the story about Pyongyang's "enriched uranium program" sound plausible. The February 12 issue of the New York Times again carried misinformation that a Pakistani nuclear expert visited the DPRK more than 10 times at the end of the 1990s to help it in the technology of developing nuclear weapons based on enriched uranium. The story about the "enriched uranium program" much touted by the U.S. is nothing but a whopping lie. The US ultra- neo-conservatives fabricated it after having a confab for more than 10 days in the wake of U.S. presidential envoy Kelly's Pyongyang visit in October 2002.
The story is nothing but a poor burlesque orchestrated against this backdrop.
What matters is why the U.S. styling itself "the world's only superpower" has worked so desperately for years to paint the non-existent and unverifiable "enriched uranium program" as truth.
Lurking behind it is an ulterior intention to make the international community believe it, scour the interior of the DPRK on the basis of legitimate mandate in a bid to disarm it just as the U.S. did in Iraq and justify its brigandish demand that Pyongyang scrap its nuclear program first at the upcoming six-way talks.
It is a trite method of the Bush administration to fabricate false information and violate the sovereignty of independent states under that pretext. The U.S. can not exist without plot-breeding and conspiracy. It is clearly proved by the Iraqi war.
It is by no means fortuitous that foreign news reports quoted the parties concerned as saying they have never transferred nuclear technology to the DPRK. According to the British Financial Times, the Pakistani president officially stated that Pakistan purchased missiles, not nuclear technology from the DPRK.
The DPRK's self-reliant nuclear power industry and its nuclear deterrent force for self-defense were indigenously developed and perfected by scientists and technicians of the DPRK.
The DPRK was compelled to change the purpose of its nuclear power industry based on graphite-moderated reactors and possess a nuclear deterrent force for self-defence with a firm determination because the U.S. nuclear threat increased as the days went by and the outbreak of a dangerous war of aggression became imminent.
The U.S. smear campaign once again forced the army and the people of the DPRK to keenly realize what a just measure it took to build a nuclear deterrent force for self-defence by its own efforts.

>> KCNA 5026...
U.S. Moves to Ignite War of Aggression against DPRK Denounced
Pyongyang, February 14 (KCNA) -- The United States worked out the "new operation plan 5026", which indicates that it is making the start of a war of aggression against the DPRK an established fact and frantically pushing forward its preparations, says Rodong Sinmun today in a signed commentary. The plan is a very dangerous war scenario to realize the bellicose Bush forces' reckless strategy to stifle the DPRK and their brigandish attempt to mount a preemptive nuclear attack as it means a perfect version of their earlier plans for a war against the DPRK, the commentary notes, and goes on: What should not be overlooked is that the U.S. military has already examined the possibility of putting the plan into practice.
The new war scenario suggests that the outcries of the U.S. imperialists that north Korea is the next target after Iraq are not a mere threat but a preliminary declaration of war against the DPRK.
The reality clearly shows what a reckless and dangerous phase the U.S. moves for a war of aggression against the DPRK have reached.
The DPRK has so far made every sincere effort to peacefully settle the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the U.S. However, the U.S. imperialists are hatching a plot to start a war of aggression behind the curtain of a "peaceful solution" to the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the U.S., a challenge to the DPRK.
The developments confirm once again that warning is not enough for those lunatics shaking their fists.
The U.S. imperialists must stop acting rashly and drop their reckless plan for aggression against the DPRK at once, properly understanding the determination of the army and people of the DPRK to repel any aggression and defend peace on the Korean peninsula and the security of the nation, pursuant to the invincible Songun policy.
All the Koreans should more valiantly wage the anti-U.S. patriotic sacred struggle to achieve national independence, peace and reunification through national cooperation.
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And in Iran, the winner is ... Rafsanjani
By Safa Haeri

PARIS - As expected, given their pre-poll maneuvers to tilt the playing field their way, conservatives dominated the seventh legislative elections in Iran, putting an end to four years of endless, futile disputes more on semantics than the real problems at the heart of the majority of Iran's 70 million people, like jobs and security, that the victors now promise to address promptly.

According to the latest figures released by the Interior Ministry, a little over half of the country's 46 million eligible voters went to the polls on Friday, the lowest level in all elections held in the past 25 years, and candidates considered loyal to the Islamic rulers took at least 149 places in the 290-seat majlis, or parliament, which had been controlled by pro-reform lawmakers since their landslide win four years ago.

In that four years, reformist parliamentary bills were consistently blocked by the Guardians Council (GC), the conservative 12-man watchdog that supervises both legislation and elections. In the run-up to the election, the GC disqualified some 2,500 candidates, mostly reformists, including all the top vote-winners from the 2000 election.

A key result in the polling gives the Coalition of Builders of Islamic Iran, a new grouping comprising lesser-known politicians, scholars, civil servants and Revolutionary Guard officers close to former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani all the 30 seats of the majlis allocated to the capital Tehran, the reformists' traditional bastion. Current majlis Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, a reformer closely aligned with President Mohammad Khatami, trailed in 31st place. The Speaker had broken ranks with other reformists by taking part in the ballots. Top of the 30 is Haddad Adel, a scholar and husband of the daughter of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Rafsanjani, who as the chairman of the powerful Assembly for Discerning the Interests of the State (ADIS, or the Expediency Council) sits between a Supreme Leader who has been harmed by the election wrangling and a president who has lost virtually all his popularity and charisma, is considered the real winner of the electoral crisis.

According to most Iranian political analysts, the next majlis will be controlled by "moderate, non-political" candidates "united" under the umbrella of the pragmatic Rafsanjani, who before the elections had predicted that the new parliament would be "more docile and balanced" than the outgoing one that was controlled overwhelmingly by the noisy but ultimately impotent reformists.

In sharp contrast to both Khamenei and Khatami, former president Rafsanjani (1989-97) has expressed regret that the "tragic events before the elections" had created a "sour atmosphere" in bringing the people to "turn their backs" (to the elections), blaming indirectly the GC for the situation. The new parliament is now likely to be a struggle between the more pragmatic conservatives and the more hardline ones, with Rafsanjani playing the role of chief mediator.

Offering an olive branch to the badly lamed president Khatami, Adel, who is head of the minority in the outgoing majlis - and who if confirmed as Tehran's No 1 candidate might become the majlis' first-ever non-turbaned Speaker - said that if Khatami came "back into line" and worked for the betterment of needy people, he would certainly be helped by the next parliament. This should appease those who predict a "difficult" period for Khatami in his relations with a majlis controlled by conservatives in the last months of his presidency. This position is up for re-election in the middle of next year.

Khatami, though, has sided with the Supreme Leader every time the regime has been challenged by people in the streets, as in the student uprisings of July 1999 and 2003. He also had a good working relationship with a legislative controlled by hardliners in the period between his first election to the presidency in 1997 until the parliamentary elections of 2000, when the reformists swept the majority of the majlis' 290 seats

"The best message the voters sent was that there will no longer be a majority or a minority [in the next parliament], but representatives at the service of the people, dedicated to solving their problems," said Ahmad Tavakkoli, a conservative candidate who secured second place in Tehran.

Commented Mohammad Mohsen Sazegara, a former "Islamist revolutionary" now struggling for a "radical change" of the theocracy into a secular democracy based on the power of parliament: "The conservatives blamed their reformist rivals for the situation [political unrest], but in fact the population had made up its mind much before, realizing that under the present political system, there is no way to bring any major or real reform. When Khatami was elected to the presidency thanks to a massive vote from the younger generation, Iranians were happy with the limited reforms he promised. But the system is such that neither he, nor the majlis he controlled, were able to advance one single item of their reforms. As a result, what people are asking now is no more reforms in the constitution, like limiting the powers of the Guardians Council or giving the president some of his constitutional responsibilities, but fundamental structural changes," Sazegara said.

Meanwhile, the conservatives will have to deliver where the reformists failed, especially in the economic arena. Their pre-election slogans all stressed the need to put factional struggles aside to get the nation back to work, especially the thousands of young people pouring onto the job market. This will entail large investment, especially form abroad. For this reason if no other, Iran and its politics cannot remain isolated from the outside world.

Shaky international support
"It's plain for everybody to see that these were from the start flawed elections in which in at least half the constituencies, reformist candidates were not on offer to the electorate," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, a close contact between Iran and the United States, as he arrived for a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels earlier in the week.

A draft statement by the ministers called the election a "setback for democracy" in the Islamic republic and in Washington, the State Department's senior spokesman, Richard Boucher, said: "It was not an electoral process that met international standards and I think you've seen other members of the international community say that."

"The death of illusions in Iran also means the death of the European policy of 'constructive dialogue' first proposed by the Germans in the 1980s and now most actively pursued by the British. That policy was based on the assumption that the regime can reform itself, peacefully and speedily. It is now clear that it cannot," wrote veteran Iranian journalist Amir Taheri in the Saudi Arabian English-language newspaper Arab News. "They [EU] can decide to, holding their noses, continue dealing with the Iranian regime because they need its cooperation on a number of issues, notably nuclear non-proliferation, Iraq and Afghanistan. Or they can orchestrate a set of new diplomatic, economic and even military pressures on the regime as a means of encouraging the emergence of a genuinely democratic internal opposition."

The administration of US President George W Bush, for its part, needs to develop a coherent analysis of the Iranian situation. It must decide whether or not Iran is, in the words of the State Department's No 2 Richard Armitage, a "sort of democracy" or a "despotic regime", Taheri added.

Therein lies the dilemma for the West. Although the EU is likely to continue its so-called "critical dialogue" that was coined by Germany, Iran's main trade partner and political supporter, analysts warn that in the event that the "monopolists" really try to set the clocks back, especially on the social scene, the EU will move closer to the United States in taking a tougher attitude toward Tehran, mostly on the sensitive and controversial issue of Iran's nuclear programs. The conservatives struck a deal with Britain, France and Germany last November to open Iran's nuclear facilities to inspection, much to the concern of the US, which wanted tough sanctions on the suspected rogue nuclear nation.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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NEWS ANALYSIS
Two bombings in three weeks:
Will the Jerusalem fence help?
By Leslie Susser
JERUSALEM, Feb. 23 (JTA) -- The burnt-out hulk of an Israeli bus destroyed by a Palestinian suicide bomber had just arrived at The Hague on Sunday when a second bus blew up at a busy intersection in Jerusalem.
The first bus -- the remains of a Palestinian bomber?s work in Jerusalem on Jan. 29 -- was meant to protest this week?s International Court of Justice hearings on the legality of the security barrier Israel is building to stop the bombers.
The images of the two mangled buses made Israel?s case against terrorism better than words ever could.
But they also raised serious issues for Israel.
The two bombings, which killed 19 Israelis and injured more than 100, occurred in densely populated residential sections of the city within three weeks of each other.
Their proximity raised two key questions: How effective is Israel?s barrier likely to be against would-be Palestinian bombers? And if it is effective everywhere else, will Jerusalem -- with its patchwork of Arab and Jewish neighborhoods -- become the soft underbelly of the system and the main target of Palestinian terrorism?
The barrier, for most of its planned 450 mile-route, is a sophisticated network of wire mesh fences built with electronic sensors, patrol roads, ditches, cameras and watchtowers. In some short spans, the barrier is a concrete wall.
In both bombing cases, the attackers came from the Bethlehem area.
According to Israel?s Shin Bet security services, the bombers infiltrated Jerusalem though gaps in the fence south of the city. Work on the fence there has been held up for weeks in Israeli courts.
Had that southern portion of the barrier been complete, Israeli advocates of the fence system say, the bombings probably would have been prevented. Indeed, they say, the fact that the bombings occurred is a strong argument for speedy completion of the barrier separating Israelis from Palestinians -- in Jerusalem and everywhere else.
The problem with that argument is that the fence in Jerusalem is unlike the fence anywhere else.
Between Israel proper and the West Bank, the fence separates Israelis from Palestinians and serves as a security barrier between would-be suicide bombers and their targets in Israel, even if it does not offer protection for Jewish settlers on the Palestinian side of the fence.
In Jerusalem, however, the fence runs along the city?s outer perimeter, separating it from the West Bank but leaving on the Israeli side most of the city?s 200,000 Palestinians. There is no barrier between them and the city?s buses. They could provide a huge fount of Arab terror against Israel.
Danny Seidemann, an U.S.-born lawyer who has studied the Jerusalem fence and knows virtually every inch of its convoluted route, is convinced that that is precisely what will happen.
Seidemann argues that besides leaving nearly 200,000 Palestinians in the capital city, the fence cuts arbitrarily through Palestinian suburbs, cuts off Palestinians from their natural hinterland in the West Bank and cuts off others from Jerusalem itself.
Given the mixture of Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, he maintains that a rational division of Jews and Arabs simply is not possible.
"In Jerusalem," Seidemann told JTA, "Israelis should defend themselves against terror by other, more sophisticated means."
Seidemann contends that the fence in Jerusalem is counterproductive. He argues that the main reason Jerusalem Arabs have not taken any significant part in terrorist activities until now is because of their relatively high standard of living.
Per capita income for Jerusalem Arabs, Seidemann says, is about $3,500 per year, more than four times as much as in the rest of the West Bank. Until now, Jerusalem Arabs have been unwilling to risk their standard of living by provoking Israeli reprisals and defensive measures that could strangle economic life, Seidemann says.
But the fence threatens to put an end to all that.
Cut off from the West Bank, prices in Arab neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem will rise and standards of living will decrease.
The humanitarian and economic problems created by the fence, Seidemann argues, will increase terror, not reduce it.
Moreover, Palestinians in Jerusalem who decide to turn to terrorism will not be impeded by a barrier, since the fence runs mainly outside the city, not inside it.
Jerusalem could become the prime focus of the terrorists because of its symbolic resonance in both Israeli and Palestinian narratives, and because of the relative ease with which its targets can be reached. That would create a new security problem for Israel?s armed forces and its police, possibly entailing a stronger presence in the eastern part of the city.
Already, there have been 25 suicide bombings in Jerusalem during the three years of intifada, nearly all by bombers from outside the city. These attacks have claimed more than 180 lives, nearly 20 percent of all Israeli casualties of the intifada.
Jerusalem Arabs joining the ranks of the terrorists could have horrific consequences for both sides, Seidemann says.
Blowing up the second bus in Jerusalem seemed to play into Israel?s hands in the public-relations campaign against the proceedings at The Hague, which Israel officially is boycotting on the grounds that the court lacks jurisdiction in the matter.
On the day the proceedings began this week, Israel?s daily Yediot Achronot led its front-page preview of the court?s hearings with a letter to the 15-judge panel from a woman who was turned into a widow by Sunday?s bombing.
"You are sitting in judgment," wrote Fanny Haim, "and I am burying my husband."
Though the Palestinian Authority condemned the latest bombing, Palestinian spokesmen seemed more concerned about the bad timing of the attack than the bombing itself.
A branch of the Al-Aksa Brigade affiliated with P.A. President Yasser Arafat?s Fatah organization claimed responsibility for the attack. Some Israeli analysts saw this as evidence of chaos on the Palestinian side, since the bombing does not seem to serve the Palestinian Authority?s interests.
Meanwhile, P.A. leaders reportedly have sent messages to terrorist commanders urging them to exercise restraint for the time being.
But whether controlled from above or the result of grass-roots efforts, the attacks against Israeli civilians show few signs of abating soon.
And if the judges at The Hague rule against Israel?s fence -- ignoring the terrorism that prompted its construction -- their ruling could encourage terrorists further.
The bottom line is that whatever happens at The Hague, Israel will go on building its security fence. In Jerusalem, however, that may not be enough.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.


? JTA. Reproduction of material without written permission is strictly prohibited.
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Les menaces terroristes prennent de l'ampleur
Ben Laden menace George W. Bush
Oussama Ben Laden choisit le jour m?me o? les forces pakistanaises, appuy?es par un commando am?ricain, l'unit? 121 - celui-l? m?me qui a arr?t? Saddam Hussein - lancent une vaste op?ration pr?s de la ville de Wana (300 km au sud-ouest d'Islamabad) contre les talibans et une cinquantaine des membres de son r?seau Al Qa?da, o? ces derniers auraient ?t? localis?s, pour menacer George W. Bush de nouvelles attaques et sommer Jacques Chirac de revenir sur la loi fran?aise sur le voile. Dans un enregistrement diffus? hier par la cha?ne de t?l?vision Al Djazira, Ayman Al Zaouahari, l'Egyptien, invite le pr?sident am?ricain ? renforcer la s?curit? des Etats-Unis en pr?vision de nouveaux attentats.
? Bush, renforce tes d?fenses et tes mesures de s?curit? parce que la nation musulmane qui t'a envoy? les l?gions de New York et de Washington est d?termin?e ? t'envoyer l?gion sur l?gion, r?solues ? mourir et ? atteindre le paradis ?, d?clare le bras droit du terroriste le plus recherch? au monde, accusant le pr?sident am?ricain de ? raconter ? des mensonges ? ses concitoyens.
? Les all?gations de George Bush selon lesquelles ses soldats ont arr?t? les deux tiers des membres d'Al Qa?da sont enti?rement fausses ?, dit- il. Le pr?sident am?ricain avait estim? dans un entretien, le 8 f?vrier ? la cha?ne de t?l?vision am?ricaine NBC, que les Etats-Unis faisaient ? un tr?s bon travail ? pour ? d?manteler Al Qa?da ?, dont ? les deux tiers des chefs ont ?t? captur?s ou tu?s ?. Al Zaouahari a ?galement r?fut? ? trois autres all?gations de Bush ?. La premi?re : ? ses forces r?pandent la paix et la libert? dans le monde ?. La deuxi?me : ? L'Irak a acc?d? ? la libert? gr?ce aux forces de la coalition ?. La troisi?me : ? La situation en Afghanistan est stable ?. ? Tes forces ne r?pandent pas la paix et la libert?, mais la peur et la d?solation et placent les gouvernants corrompus ?, ajoute-t-il. ? L'Irak ne jouit pas de la libert? et de la s?curit?, mais est pass? de la tyrannie d'un dictateur la?c et ennemi de l'islam () ? celle d'un occupant crois? hostile ?
l'islam, qui tue, torture et vole ce qu'il veut tout en pr?tendant que les forces am?ricaines cherchent des armes de destruction massive illusoires ?, poursuit-il avant d'interpeller Bush sur l'Afghanistan. ? D'o? menons-nous des attaques contre vos forces et vos agents ? D'o? vous envoyons-nous nos messages qui vous d?fient et d?voilent vos mensonges et vos all?gations ? ? lui demande-t-il. Dans un autre document audio diffus? sur la cha?ne Al Arabia, Al Zaouahri fustige la loi fran?aise sur l'interdiction des signes religieux ostensibles ? l'?cole et dans des lieux publics. Le lieutenant de Ben Laden prend le relais des protestations des pays arabes et musulmans, d?clench?es juste apr?s l'adoption de ce texte en premi?re lecture par l'Assembl?e fran?aise le 10 f?vrier dernier, par les islamistes qui l'ont qualifi? d'? islamophobe ?. Il assimile la loi fran?aise ? ? de nouvelles croisades des pays de l'Ouest contre les musulmans ?. Pour lui, ? la d?cision du pr?sident fran?ais de faire voter une loi pour emp?cher les filles musulmanes de recouvrir leur t?te dans les ?coles est un autre exemple de la jalousie des crois?s que nourrissent les Occidentaux ? l'?gard des musulmans ?. ? M?me s'ils se vantent de libert?s, de d?mocratie et de droits de l'homme ?, ajoute-t-il. Pour Al Qa?da, ? l'interdiction du voile en France s'inscrit dans le m?me cadre que l'incendie des villages en Afghanistan, la destruction des maisons sur les t?tes de leurs occupants en Palestine, le massacre des enfants et le vol du p?trole en Irak ?. En d?cidant de ? reprendre ? son b?ton de chef terroriste Ben Laden chercherait-il ? desserrer l'?tau qui se resserre autour de lui et de ses membres ? Probablement. Trois informations au moins le confirment. La premi?re : le communiqu? d'un
? centre d'information taliban ? selon lequel les chefs de l'organisation Al Qa?da, Ben Laden et Al Zaouahiri, sont ? en vie ? et se trouvent ? en Afghanistan occup?s ? planifier des op?rations antiam?ricaines ?. La deuxi?me, les informations des services am?ricains rapportant que des commandos terroristes libanais, membres de ? Ossbat al Anssar ?, une organisation dont le si?ge se trouve au Liban et qui est inf?od? ? Ben Laden, envisagent de frapper les int?r?ts am?ricains et juifs dans plusieurs pays arabes, dont le Maroc. Selon Rabat, ? les autorit?s marocaines ont re?u des informations pr?cises de la part des services secrets concernant l'intention de certains terroristes () d'A?n
El Helweh de frapper les int?r?ts am?ricains et juifs au Maroc et en Tunisie ?. La troisi?me : la mise en uvre par le d?partement d'Etat du ? Plan Sahel Initiative ?, annonc? en octobre 2002. D?sormais, les forces sp?ciales de Mauritanie, du Mali, du Niger et du Tchad seront form?es par les Am?ricains. Ben Laden, qu'un Am?ricain sur cinq se dit pr?t ? payer pour voir en direct sa mise ? mort, r?ussira-t-il avec un coup de pouce des services iraniens de l'exportation de la r?volution islamique ? allumer plusieurs feux ? la fois dans le monde arabe et musulman ?
Djamel Boukrine

Djamel Boukrine
24-02-2004
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Le num?ro deux d'Al-Qaida s'en prend ? la France sur la question du voile islamique
LEMONDE.FR | 24.02.04 | 20h31
Av?r?e ou pas, la d?claration attribu?e mardi au num?ro deux d'Al-Qaida, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, tente de faire d'un dossier int?rieur controvers? en France une nouvelle cause de djihad, selon des experts.
Deux semaines apr?s l'adoption de sa loi contre le port de signes religieux ? l'?cole, la France s'est retrouv?e, mardi 24 f?vrier, au c?ur des diatribes d'Al-Qaida. Dans un document sonore diffus? mardi par la t?l?vision satellitaire Al-Arabiya, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, consid?r? comme le bras droit d'Oussama Ben Laden, accuse Paris de participer ? la "croisade" des Occidentaux contre l'islam en interdisant aux jeunes musulmanes de porter leur voile en classe.

La grande majorit? des messages attribu?s ? Al-Qaida se concentraient jusqu'alors sur les pays ayant particip? ?, ou soutenu l'op?ration am?ricaine en Irak, ? laquelle Jacques Chirac s'est fermement oppos? l'hiver dernier. "La France est le pays de la libert? qui d?fend la libert? d'exposer son corps, d'?tre immoral et d?prav?", peut-on entendre sur l'enregistrement, dont la voix et le style sont facilement identifiables.

"En France, on est libre de s'exhiber, mais pas de se v?tir avec modestie (...). Il s'agit l? d'un nouveau signe de la croisade haineuse que les Occidentaux m?nent contre les musulmans tout en se gargarisant de libert?, de d?mocratie et de droits de l'homme", d?plore l'auteur de la diatribe. Si l'authenticit? de la cassette n'a pas pu ?tre ?tablie dans l'imm?diat, la voix ressemble ? celle des pr?c?dents messages d?livr?s par Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Chef de file du mouvement ?gyptien des Fr?res musulmans, il aurait trouv? refuge, de m?me qu'Oussama Ben Laden, dans les "zones tribales" entre l'Afghanistan et le Pakistan.

Aux yeux de l'organisation terroriste, la loi fran?aise interdisant les signes religieux "ostensibles" dans l'enceinte des ?coles ne serait qu'une illustration suppl?mentaire du foss? se creusant entre l'islam et l'Occident.

Les d?put?s fran?ais ont adopt? le projet de loi le 10 f?vrier et le S?nat doit examiner le texte les 2 et 3 mars. Pour le gouvernement fran?ais, qui doit composer avec les plus grandes communaut?s juive et musulmane d'Europe, il s'agit de pr?server l'?cole de tout pros?lytisme religieux. Pour nombre de pays musulmans, la loi vise en fait seulement l'islam et ses prescriptions.

"Il fallait s'attendre ? un retour de b?ton politique", estime Jonathan Stevenson, sp?cialiste de l'antiterrorisme au International Institute for Strategic Studies de Londres. "Al-Qaida a tout le loisir d'interpr?ter (la loi) comme la suppression d'une libert? religieuse. Il est certain que (cette cassette) peut remotiver les terroristes potentiels en France", ajoute-t-il.

CAUSE DE DJIHAD

Av?r?e ou pas, la d?claration attribu?e au num?ro deux d'Al-Qaida tente de faire d'un dossier int?rieur controvers? une nouvelle cause de djihad, selon des experts. S'il ne prononce pas le mot "djihad", celui qui est consid?r? comme le penseur d'Al-Qaida souligne que "l'interdiction du voile en France s'inscrit dans le m?me cadre que l'incendie des villages en Afghanistan, la destruction des maisons sur les t?tes de leurs occupants en Palestine, le massacre des enfants et le vol du p?trole en Irak".

Officiellement, la France refuse de commenter cette d?claration. Au sein des services de renseignement, on estime que le document "replace les Fran?ais dans le camp des crois?s", alors que la France, qui n'a pas particip? ? la guerre en Irak, avait pu sembler m?nag?e lors des derni?res d?clarations attribu?es ? Al-Qaida.

A l'attention exclusive de la France, cette d?claration porte sur le front panislamiste une affaire int?rieure, incitant ? l'action ou la l?gitimant ? l'avance, selon des experts. "C'est en tout cas une incitation ? une action terroriste. Al-Zawahiri, v?ritable cerveau d'Al-Qaida, consid?re que la loi est un moyen de faire des relations publiques vis-?-vis des communaut?s musulmanes en France et en Europe car il a vu que cela int?ressait beaucoup", estime Antoine Sfeir, directeur de la revue Les Cahiers de l'Orient.

L'?laboration du texte sur le port de signes religieux ostensibles ? l'?cole, dont le voile islamique, a suscit? de tr?s vifs d?bats en France. Plusieurs milliers de manifestants ont d?fil? ? plusieurs reprises en France mais aussi ? l'?tranger contre "l'islamophobie" et le projet de loi.

"En proposant cette loi, on a pris ? bras le corps le probl?me de l'id?ologie sectaire dans une soci?t? d?mocratique, ce qui conduit ? un ph?nom?ne de radicalisation. La d?claration d'Ayman Al-Zawahiri est coh?rente : il fallait bien qu'? un moment donn? on aille ? la confrontation", estime Fran?ois G?r?, directeur de l'institut Diplomatie et d?fense.

"Il y a ? travers le voile une volont? d'internationaliser les contradictions et oppositions entre un certain islam et l'Occident : c'est une fa?on d'enfoncer un coin au sein des communaut?s musulmanes des pays occidentaux", poursuit M. G?r? qui parle aussi d'un "appel ? l'action".

La notion de djihad contient l'id?e que l'islam est attaqu? et qu'il faut d?s lors le d?fendre, rappelle un sp?cialiste de la lutte antiterroriste. "Cette loi peut ?tre comprise par des militants islamistes radicaux comme une nouvelle attaque. On peut se demander si la d?claration de Zawahiri n'est pas une justification a priori d'?ventuelles actions".

L'Union des organisations islamiques de France (UOIF), mouvement proche des Fr?res musulmans, tr?s oppos? ? la loi, a qualifi? cette d?claration "d'irresponsable". "L'UOIF refuse cat?goriquement l'internationalisation de la question du foulard et sa r?cup?ration politique ou politico-religieuse", a d?clar? son pr?sident, Lhaj Thami Breze.

Le pr?sident du Conseil fran?ais du culte musulman (CFCM), Dalil Boubakeur, parle lui de "provocation" ? laquelle "il ne faut pas r?pondre".

MENACES CONTRE LES AM?RICAINS

Quelques heures apr?s la violente diatribe contre la France, la cha?ne Al-Jazira a diffus? un autre enregistrement attribu? ? Ayman Al-Zawahiri dans lequel il conseille aux Etats-Unis de renforcer leur s?curit? en pr?vision de nouveaux attentats. "Al-Qaida m?ne toujours le djihad et brandit la banni?re de l'islam face ? la campagne sioniste-crois?e", d?clare l'auteur de ce message.

"Bush, renforce tes mesures de s?curit? (...), la nation islamique, qui vous a envoy? les brigades de New York et de Washington (r?f?rence aux attentats du 11 septembre 2001), a pris la ferme d?cision de vous envoyer des brigades successives semant la mort et aspirant au paradis", ajoute, ? l'attention du pr?sident am?ricain, la voix du message.

L'enregistrement semble r?pondre ? M. Bush, qui avait estim? d?but f?vrier sur une cha?ne am?ricaine que Washington faisait "un tr?s bon travail" pour "d?manteler Al-Qaida", ajoutant que "les deux tiers" de ses chefs avaient "?t? captur?s ou tu?s".

La voix r?fute ?galement "trois autres all?gations de Bush" selon lesquelles, "ses forces r?pandent la paix et la libert? dans le monde, que l'Irak a acc?d? ? la libert? gr?ce aux forces de la coalition et que la situation en Afghanistan est stable". "Tes forces ne r?pandent pas la paix et la libert?, mais la peur et la d?solation", ajoute la voix, "l'Irak ne jouit pas de la libert? et de la s?curit?, mais est pass? de la tyrannie d'un dictateur la?que et ennemi de l'islam (...), ? celle d'un occupant crois? hostile ? l'islam, qui tue, torture et vole ce qu'il veut".

"Quant ? la situation en Afghanistan, elle ne s'est pas stabilis?e (...). Autrement, d'o? menons-nous des attaques contre vos forces et vos agents ? d'o? vous envoyons-nous nos messages qui (...) d?voilent vos mensonges et vos all?gations ?" demande la voix.

Pour deux activistes islamistes, ce message et ces menaces sont ? prendre au s?rieux. "La menace de nouvelles attaques aux Etats-Unis, qui co?ncide avec des informations de presse sur l'encerclement d'Oussama Ben Laden, est ? prendre au s?rieux", affirme Omar Bakri, le chef du mouvement islamiste Al-Mouhadjiroun, mouvement salafiste bas? ? Londres.

"Jusqu'? pr?sent, Al-Qaida a mis ? ex?cution ses menaces, m?me si la plupart des op?rations men?es depuis le 11 septembre, en Turquie, en Arabie saoudite, en Irak et ailleurs ?taient l'?uvre de groupes locaux qui s'inspirent d'Al-Qaida et partagent son id?ologie", dit-il.

"M?me si Ben Laden ou Zawahiri sont captur?s ou tu?s, d'autres op?rations d'envergure sont attendues", ajoute M. Bakri dont le mouvement pr?ne la cr?ation d'Etats musulmans partout dans le monde, y compris au Royaume-Uni.

Avec AFP et Reuters
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El Baradei unterst?tzt Libyens Wunsch nach ziviler Atomnutzu
24.02.2004 08:58
Tripolis (dpa) - Der Generaldirektor der Internationalen Atomenergieorganisation, Mohammed el Baradei, unterst?tzt den Wunsch Libyens nach ziviler Atomforschung.
Das sei legitim, sagte er nach einem Treffen mit Au?enminister Abderrahman Schalkam in der Hauptstadt Tripolis. Zugleich lobte Baradei die ?hervorragende Zusammenarbeit? mit der Regierung. Libyen hatte im Dezember den Stopp aller Programme zur Entwicklung von Massenvernichtungswaffen angek?ndigt.
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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 24. Februar 2004, 17:28
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,287831,00.html
9/11-Untersuchung

CIA in Erkl?rungsnot

Von Matthias Gebauer

Die US-Kommission, die Fehler im Vorfeld des 11. Septembers aufkl?ren soll, recherchiert derzeit in Deutschland. Von dort wurden Informationen ?ber die Todes-Piloten bereits 1999 in die USA gekabelt, blieben aber unbeachtet. Auch der missgl?ckte Anwerbeversuch bei Freunden von Atta und Co. wird die CIA in Erkl?rungsnot bringen.



AP
US-Pr?sident Bush mit CIA-Chef Tenet: Anwerbeversuche auf deutschem Boden
Berlin - Die Schlagzeile der "New York Times" vom Dienstag klingt viel versprechend. "CIA bekam Daten ?ber Todes-Piloten weit vor dem 11. September", titelt das angesehene Blatt. Weiter schreibt die Zeitung unter Berufung auf ihre Quellen, die US-Beh?rden h?tten von den deutschen Geheimdiensten bereits 1999 konkrete Informationen ?ber den 9/11-Entf?hrer Marwan al-Schehhi bekommen, der das zweite Flugzeug in das World Trade Center steuerte und vorher lange mit den anderen Terroristen in Hamburg wohnte. Konkret seien der Vorname des sp?teren Todes-Piloten und dessen in den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten registrierte Telefonnummer aus Hamburg zur CIA gekabelt worden.
Laut dem Bericht sind die angeblich neuen Erkenntnisse bei den Recherchen der unabh?ngigen Untersuchungskommission ?ber m?gliche Fehler im Vorfeld des 11. Septembers aufgetaucht. Besonders heikel sei, dass die US-Beh?rden die Daten offenbar ignoriert hatten und al-Schehhi sp?ter zur Flugausbildung in die USA einreisen konnte. "Die Vereinigten Staaten scheinen bei der aggressiven Verfolgung dieses Hinweises versagt zu haben", folgern die beiden Washington-Korrespondenten. Laut Aussagen anonymer Offizieller h?tten die US-Beh?rden zwar angenommen, al-Schehhi sei ein "Vertrauter Osama Bin Ladens", ihn jedoch nie gesucht oder weiter recherchiert.

"Bruder Haydar" und sein "Djihad-Reiseb?ro"



SPIEGEL ONLINE
Anwerbebogen von Marwan al-Schehhi: "Komm bald nach Hamburg"
Deutsche Experten reagierten mit Kopfsch?tteln auf die angeblich neuen Erkenntnisse. Innenminister Otto Schily, derzeit in den USA auf Dienstreise, nutzte am Dienstag ein Reporter-Briefing, um einem der beiden "Times"-Autoren seine Sicht der Dinge darzustellen. "Ihr Artikel ist ein bisschen irref?hrend", sagte Schily. Kurz darauf betonte der Minister, zum Zeitpunkt der Informationsweitergabe sei den deutschen Beh?rden die Relevanz der Daten nicht bewusst gewesen. Der Austausch solcher Erkenntnisse sei "reine Routine".
Hierzulande ist die Informations-Weitergabe in die USA seit langem bekannt. So hatten die deutschen Verfassungssch?tzer im Jahr 1999 den Deutsch-Syrer Mohammed Zammar im Visier, der als Rekrutierer der Qaida in Deutschland galt. Tag und Nacht hingen sie an seinem Telefon, um mehr ?ber "Bruder Haydar" und sein "Djihad-Reiseb?ro" herauszufinden. Damals vermuteten die Fahnder, dass Zammar kampfwillige Muslime nach Afghanistan schleuste und sie dort in den Trainings-Camps der Qaida zu Gotteskriegern ausbilden lie?.

Es war am 31. Januar 1999, als die deutschen Beh?rden bei ihren ?berwachungen das erste Mal den Namen "Marwan" h?rten. Der Mann mit der jungenhaften Stimme rief mit einem in den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten registrierten Funktelefon bei Zammar an und erkundigte sich nach dessen Wohlbefinden. Zammar beriet dem Anrufer in einigen Studienfragen und bat ihn, schon bald von seinem damaligen Studienort Bonn nach Hamburg zu kommen. Der Anrufer versicherte, dies im Mai 1999 zu tun und legte mit besten W?nschen auf.

Per Kabelbericht direkt nach Langley

Die deutschen Ermittler hatten die potentielle Wichtigkeit des Anrufs durchaus registriert. Obwohl sie bei ihren eigenen Recherchen nicht viel weiter kamen, kabelten sie ihre Erkenntnisse umgehend an die CIA und baten um Sch?tzenhilfe. Bis nach dem 11. September aber h?ren sie nie wieder etwas. Erst Tage nach den Terror-Attacken in den USA kam die von den Ermittlern fast liebevoll genannte "Operation Zartheit" wieder auf den Tisch und interessierte nun auch die US-Fahnder. Still haben wohl auch sie sich eingestanden, dass sie den Tipp aus Hamburg nicht ernst genug genommen haben. Die gleiche Erkenntnis plagt seit den Terror-Attacken auch so manchen deutschen Fahnder.



AP
Verd?chtiger Zammar: Pauschal-Reisen zum Terror-Training
So bitter die sp?te Erkenntnis f?r deutsche und US-Ermittler auch ist, so nah waren sie den sp?teren Todes-Piloten zu diesem Zeitpunkt. Der beobachtete Zammar stand bis zuletzt mit allen Hamburger Terroristen in engem Kontakt. Der bei der ?berwachung aufgefallene Marwan al-Schehhi zog schon kurz nach dem Telefonat an die Elbe, wohnte gemeinsam mit den anderen in der ber?chtigten Terror-WG in der Marienstra?e 54, wo die Endphase der 9/11-Planung lief. Mit einer weiteren ?berwachung, so die d?stere Einsicht der Ermittler heute, h?tte man den 9/11-Plot vielleicht sogar verhindern k?nnen.
Was wusste die CIA ?ber die Hamburger Verd?chtigen?

Selbst wenn die deutsche Beteiligung an der Ermittlungs-Schlappe nicht neu ist, k?nnte die Untersuchung die Pannen in den USA endlich aufkl?ren. Die US-Fahnder m?ssen sich fragen lassen, warum der deutsche Hinweis nicht bearbeitet, "Marwan" nicht identifiziert wurde. Auch warum die CIA die deutschen Daten nicht an das FBI oder die Einreisebeh?rde weiter reichte, d?rfte von Interesse sein. So h?tte die Einreise von al-Schehhi verhindert, vielleicht sogar alle Mitglieder der "Hamburger Zelle" ermitteln werden k?nnen.

Auch der Blick ins Zeitungs-Archiv k?nnte f?r die Kommission hilfreich sein. Interessant, dass sowohl Zammar als auch der ebenfalls verd?chtige Hamburger Gesch?ftsmann Mamoun Darkazanli von der CIA im Jahr 1999 angesprochen wurden. Der CIA-Resident Thomas Volz versuchte damals mehrmals, Darkazanli als Spitzel anzuwerben, da er offenbar als Statthalter f?r einen anderen Verd?chtigen aus den USA agierte. Volz wollte den Verd?chtigen als CIA-Informanten gewinnen, der Einblick in die Strukturen der Qaida geben sollte. Wie bei Zammar aber blitzte er auch bei Darkazanli ab.

"Rambo aus einem Spionage-Thriller"



AFP
CIA-Chef Tenet: Unangenehme Fragen
Ganz offenbar also besa?en die US-Beh?rden konkrete Hinweise ?ber das Umfeld der "Hamburger Zelle". Bisher aber blieb stets unklar - auch f?r die deutschen Ermittler - warum diese nicht weiter recherchiert wurden. Damals, so berichten deutsche Verfassungssch?tzer, sei die Zusammenarbeit mit dem US-Residenten schlecht gewesen. Die Deutschen hielten den CIA-Mann f?r einen "Rambo aus einem Spionage-Thriller", w?hrend der US-Geheimdienstler die Deutschen nicht ganz ernst nahm. Gleichwohl bleibt f?r die Kommission die Frage, was der CIA damals bekannt war und warum den Spuren nicht gefolgt wurde.
Die Aktionen der Kommission gehen jetzt genau in diese Richtung. Vergangene Woche waren mehrere Mitglieder zu einem Geheim-Besuch in Deutschland. Bei mehreren Terminen mit Beh?rden und Beobachtern der Terror-Ermittlungen informierten sie sich ?ber die deutsche Sicht der Dinge. Die Beteiligten der beiden deutschen Terror-Verfahren wurden in die US-Botschaft zu einem Plausch eingeladen. Immer wieder fragten die Kommissions-Mitglieder nach den Vorl?ufen der 9/11-Ermittlung in Deutschland. Die Aktionen der landeseigenen CIA auf deutschem Boden k?nnte ihnen reichlich Stoff f?r unangenehme Fragen liefern.

? SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Vervielf?ltigung nur mit Genehmigung der SPIEGELnet GmbH

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AL-QAIDA-H?FTLINGE

Erste Guantanamo-Insassen angeklagt

Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi und Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul sind die ersten beiden Terrorverd?chtigen von Guantanamo Bay, gegen die das neue US Milit?rtribunal Anklage erstattet. Beide sollen Vertraute Osama Bin Ladens sein.

Washington - Die USA haben die ersten Terrorgefangenen im US-Lager Guant?namo Bay auf Kuba angeklagt. Sie sollen sich wegen Verschw?rung zu Kriegsverbrechen vor einem Milit?rtribunal verantworten, wie das Pentagon mitteilte. Danach handelt es sich um einen Mann aus dem Jemen und einen Sudanesen, die beide im Verdacht stehen, enge Verbindung zum al-Qaida-Terroristenf?hrer Osama Bin Laden gehabt zu haben.
Die M?nner geh?ren zu rund 650 Gefangenen, die zum Teil schon seit ?ber zwei Jahren auf dem US-St?tzpunkt festgehalten werden, ohne dass ihnen bisher der Prozess gemacht wurde oder ihnen Zugang zu einem Anwalt gew?hrt wurde. Bisher sind neben den beiden Angeklagten nur vier weitere Gefangene f?r sp?tere Milit?rverfahren ausgew?hlt worden. Das Vorgehen der USA hat wiederholt Proteste von Menschenrechtsorganisationen und ausl?ndischen Regierungen ausgel?st.

In einer Pentagon-Erkl?rung hie? es, Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul aus dem Jemen werde verd?chtigt, als "f?hrender al Qaida-Propagandist" Videos produziert zu haben, in denen die Ermordung von Amerikanern verherrlicht worden sei. Ziel des fr?heren Leibw?chters Bin Ladens sei es gewesen, Mitglieder der Terrororganisation zu rekrutieren und zu Anschl?gen gegen die USA und andere L?nder anzuspornen.

Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmud al Kosi aus dem Sudan stehe im Verdacht, Finanzgesch?fte der al Qaida abgewickelt und Waffen geschmuggelt zu haben. Nach US-Erkenntnissen sei er seit langem mit Bin Laden verbunden. Beide Angeklagten h?tten sich freiwillig einem kriminellen Unternehmen angeschlossen, dessen Ziel die Ermordung von Menschen und insgesamt Terrorismus sei.

>>

How sovereignty will be returned to a shattered nation
By James Drummond
Published: February 24 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: February 24 2004 4:00
When is the coalition due to return sovereignty to Iraq? June 30, under an agreement reached on November 15 between the coalition and the US-appointed Iraq Governing Council. None of the parties wants that date postponed, though almost everything else about the transition remains uncertain.
When does the plan have to be finalised? The November 15 agreement is supposed to be final, and envisages a "fundamental law" to be signed by February 28. This would set a timetable for writing a permanent constitution and sketch elements such as a bill of rights, federal arrangements and guarantees of judicial independence. Once agreed, the law is supposed not to be tampered with.
Will this deadline be met? Maybe. But some serious negotiating still needs to be done on the constitutional process and issues such as federalism, where Iraq's Kurdish minority has particularly strong feelings.
What sort of government will be handed over to? The November 15 agreement envisaged a transitional national assembly, to be chosen by a series of regional caucuses made up of appointed members. Iraq's Shia clerics have been demanding full general elections by June 30. Both options have now been ruled out, on advice from the United Nations, which says elections cannot be held before the end of this year or early next.
So what happens next? The UN has deliberately not made recommendations on how to choose a transitional government, throwing the issue back to the coalition and Governing Council. Whatever they decide, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shia cleric, holds an effective veto.
What are the options? One would be to hand sovereignty to the Governing Council, which had been due to disappear on June 30, and/or to expand its 25-strong membership to include more interest groups. A quota system, reflecting Iraq's religious and ethnic groupings, would stay. If the council is expanded, a three- or four-person leadership council might be instituted. Another option is to hold elections in the north and south of Iraq, which have been relatively calm.
What will happen to the Coalition Provisional Authority after June 30? It will be dissolved. Paul Bremer, its chief, said last week it would transform itself into "the world's largest embassy . . . [with] thousands of American government officials from all of our major departments".
And coalition troops? The November 15 plan envisages that they will stay under agreements due to be negotiated between the CPA and the Governing Council by the end of March.
Any doubts over the legitimacy of the transitional government could, however, open this process to question.
James Drummond
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1075982764522

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Bush aide urges overhaul of Fannie and Freddie
By Stephen Schurr in New York
Published: February 23 2004 22:05 | Last Updated: February 23 2004 22:05
A senior Bush administration adviser is urging a sweeping overhaul of Fannie Mae and other government-backed home mortgage entities.
Writing in Tuesday's Financial Times, Greg Mankiw, chairman of president George W. Bush's council of economic advisers, warns of the systemic financial risks posed by the fast-growing federal-backed entities and calls for the creation of "a world-class regulator".
His comments come as Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, testifies on Tuesday at Senate banking committee hearings on regulating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System. Mr Greenspan has argued for reform of the three government-sponsored entities (GSEs). But legislation may prove difficult, given the time constraints and political sensitivities of reform in a presidential election year.
Foreign ownership of GSE and other federal agency securities totals $234bn, according to government data. Overseas investors regard the GSEs' investment worthiness on a par with US Treasuries, because of their perceived implicit backing of the federal government. But, in his article, Mr Mankiw says this impression is "inaccurate".
He calls for a regulator with broad authority over the GSEs, including the ability to set risk-based and minimum-capital standards. The regulator should also "re-evaluate" the privileges granted to the GSEs as publicly traded companies operating under federal charter. These include exemption from state and local incomes taxes and from certain disclosure requirements with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Citing a Federal Reserve study, Mr Mankiw notes that "the interest rate on the debt of Fannie and Freddie averaged 40 basis points below that on comparable securities", yet most of the subsidy goes to executive compensation and shareholder profits. While the subsidy raises issues of fairness, it more importantly "creates a source of systemic risk for our financial system".
Some observers say the Fed study may hint at Mr Greenspan's views. Burt Ely, an independent consultant, said Mr Greenspan wanted the Fed to "be a player in the new oversight". At the least, this would include having a Fed official sit on the board of any new regulator.
Critics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have long argued that the GSEs' current regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (Ofheo), lacks the clout and funding to do its job properly. The reform movement gained momentum last year when Freddie Mac was forced to revise upward its 2000-2003 earnings by $5bn and pay a $125m fine following accounting irregularities. Ofheo has commissioned a probe into Fannie Mae's accounting.
Among the questions hanging over regulatory overhaul are whether one regulator would oversee all three GSEs; whether the regulator controls minimum capital requirements; and whether it should have the power to put a GSE into receivership.
According to a spokesman, Fannie Mae's chief executive will testify on Wednesday that "Fannie is in favour of an independent well-funded regulator".
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1075982752818&p=1012571727088
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Day of rage turns to apathy and recrimination
By Sa'id Ghazali in Ramallah and Eric Silver in Jerusalem
24 February 2004
It was meant to be a day of rage, but the Palestinians' frustration was turned as much on their own leaders as on the Israelis and their intrusive wall. In Ramallah, the town where Yasser Arafat has his headquarters, yesterday's protest exposed deep divisions over the failure of the Palestinian Authority to galvanize the 2.2 million West Bank Palestinians whose lives the barrier has disrupted.
"I want you to make your voice heard to the International Court of Justice and the entire world," Mr Arafat said in a televised speech. But shopkeepers ignored calls for a one-hour strike and kept their shops open. Many pupils released from school to take part in the rallies went home instead. The roar of vehicles and the hustle and bustle of the market were louder than the sirens sounded for the occasion.
"People are asking themselves why the authority has waited so long to protest," said Ahmed Ibrahim, 31, who runs a restaurant near al Manara Square, where the demonstrators gathered. "It is too late." Ibrahim Khalayleh, a 19-year-old student, complained: "This rally cannot destroy the wall. We should have started fighting it when Israel laid down the first stone."
A human rights activist, who asked not to be named, said: "There is mistrust between the people and the PA. How can people believe that the PA will lead the protests, while at the same time there are rumors that some officials have been selling cement used for the wall's construction?"
Fatema Ilian, a village woman in a traditional embroidered red dress, lost 2.5 hectares when the wall was built on her land. She came to take part in what she believed would be a massive demonstration. Only a few hundred turned out for the march, with a few hundred more watching from the sidelines. "I feel frustrated now," she said. "I want to go home. Nobody is helping us." Somebody put on a recording of "Where are the Millions?" a popular Arabic song by the Lebanese singer Julia Botros.
As if to pre-empt criticism, Sakher Habash, a loyal member of the Fatah central committee, took the microphone with him when he finished his speech. Undeterred, Mohammed Mokbel, a dissident Palestinian legislator, brought his own microphone. "We cannot cover the sun with our sieve," he bellowed. "Marches and demonstrations are not enough. Go and destroy the wall with your stones, and your bombs."
Elsewhere on the West Bank, Israeli troops fired tear gas in a clash with anti-wall demonstrators near Tulkarm. Stone-throwing Palestinians injured six border policemen at Abu Dis, the home of Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian Prime Minister, east of Jerusalem.
Israeli counter-demonstrations were coloured by Sunday's Jerusalem suicide bombing. The charred and buckled No. 14 bus, in which Mohammed Zeoul killed himself and eight Israelis, was parked beside the 26-foot Abu Dis wall.
Fanny Haim, the widow of one of Sunday's victims, wrote in an open letter to the International Court in The Hague: "Today you are judging, and I am burying my husband. Don't judge my country, don't bar it from preventing further victims."
23 February 2004 23:21

? 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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>> THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION CONTINUED...
Oil links with Saddam's regime may have funded ANC campaign
By Basildon Peta, Southern Africa Correspondent
24 February 2004
South Africa's main opposition party called for an inquiry yesterday into allegations that the ruling African National Congress may have used kickbacks from Saddam Hussein's regime to fund its current election campaign.
Two of the ANC's most powerful officials - the secretary-general Kgalame Motlanthe and the party's treasurer-general Mendi Msimang - have close links to a Johannesburg businessman on a "black list" published by an Iraqi paper.
The newspaper, al-Mada, last month published a list of 270 companies and businessmen accused of buying millions of barrels of Iraqi oil at a lower rate than the market price, via the UN's oil-for-food programme.
The South African Sunday Times reported that the two ANC officials flew to Iraq with the businessman Sandi Majali, ostensibly to strike an oil deal, just weeks before the businessman was awarded a multi million-pound South African government oil tender in December 2001.
Mr Majali's company, Imvume, paid for a #10,000 dinner hosted by the ANC for the Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz in July 2002 when he visited South Africa as a special guest of the Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Mr Msimang told the newspaper that Mr Majali has also made contributions to the ANC.
But Mr Msimang and Mr Motlanthe have denied that they helped facilitate any oil deals, although they admitted visiting Iraq with the businessman.
Raenette Taljaard, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Alliance, said the ruling ANC party needed to set the record straight on the "possible benefits flowing to the ANC from the former Baathist regime in Iraq in a global oil-for-diplomatic-patronage scandal".
Mr Majali was not available for comment last night.
? 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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The Collapse of New Russia
By Boris Kagarlitsky
Russia is entering a period of man-made disasters. Aging Soviet-era machinery, infrastructure and buildings that went up mostly in the 1960s and early 1970s are now so worn out that they probably won't last more than a few more years. The fire at Ostankino television tower in 2000 was just a sign of things to come.
Experts close to the government dismissed such gloomy forecasts as unfounded, insisting that economic growth and the market will take care of the problem on their own.
But no one expected that the buildings thrown up in recent years would begin to crumble even before the country's vintage Soviet infrastructure finally gives out. Transvaal Park, which collapsed in southern Moscow over the weekend, was hardly the only new building with fatal flaws, but it struck a nerve. Not just because so many people were killed and injured, but also because the water park had been touted as a symbol of the "successful" new Russia.
City Hall proudly announced the opening of the "largest water park in Europe" when it opened in time for City Day back in 2002. The project was entirely financed by Russian investors -- built without city funds, the park was hailed as a triumph of private enterprise. Mayor Yury Luzhkov attended the grand opening, and the city awarded Transvaal an award for "best realized project" of 2002 in the category of sports, health and leisure facilities. Scenes of smiling middle-class families splashing and sliding soon began to flood the airwaves and the pages of glossy magazines.
Too late we learned about the seamy reality behind the idyll. After Saturday's tragedy, builders and architects associated with the project began trading accusations of shoddy work. The water park wasn't even a financial success.
In November 2003, the owners, despairing of ever bringing in the sort of profit they had banked on initially, sold Transvaal Park to a group reportedly linked to Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina, and her company Inteko. The new management vowed to turn the venture around "by cutting maintenance costs."
Inteko denies any connection to the water park, and Luzhkov has carefully skirted the maintenance issue in discussing the possible causes of the collapse. The press doesn't put much stock in Baturina's denials. But the real problem is bigger than individual businessmen, and bigger even than corruption in city government.
Among the victims of Saturday's disaster was the myth of the self-sufficiency of the market. The gaudy new buildings in Luzhkov's Moscow, a product of the building boom and the sky-rocketing value of real estate, are not so much evidence of Moscow's prosperity as a danger to the environment. By impeding the flow of ground water, they are gradually washing the city away. Not to mention that they are poorly built.
The buildings and facilities left over from the Soviet era are for the most part monstrously ugly. Many have never been repaired or renovated, and have outlived their planned life span by as much 20 years. But by some miracle they're still standing. That's not something we'll be able to say about the new generation of monsters in 10 years' time.
The safety, ecology and appearance of Moscow have suffered from the unbridled pursuit of profit. Rather than restore historic buildings, developers prefer to tear them down.
Rather than invest in unprofitable infrastructure, they erect extravagant buildings that either fail to turn a profit or collapse.
This is the case not just in Moscow but across the country. We have no money to fix broken water pipes, and in 10 years we won't be able to support our pensioners, but millions of dollars are thrown away all the time to satisfy the greed and vanity of the super-rich.
The fact that Russia's profligacy and corporate irresponsibility are hardly unique offers cold comfort, though we do engage in both with characteristic brio.
When the concrete cracks and the "elite" skyscrapers tumble, the price of real estate will fall along with them. Then we will understand the real cost of the current real estate boom. On the ruins of the old world we will begin to build the new.
We can only hope that it will be an improvement.
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
? Copyright 2002, The Moscow Times. All Rights Reserved.


>> YOU DON'T SAY...

Strengthening America's Southern Flank Requires a Better Effort
by James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., and Stephen Johnson
Backgrounder #1727

February 20, 2004 | |

In the global war on terrorism, the United States is paying too little attention to its southern flank. People, goods, and services flowing within the Western Hemisphere--both legal and illicit--have become potential conduits for carrying terrorist money, agents, and weapons. Attacks on countries such as Colombia by narco-guerrillas and on the United States by Middle Eastern extremists have already had cascading affects, disrupting markets and economies. Moreover, many Latin American countries remain unable to confront terrorism and transnational criminality, constrained by scarce resources and, in some cases, lack of political will.

While these threats appear to be growing, the U.S. military component charged with protecting American interests in the region faces an uncertain future. Responsibilities for coordinating bilateral actions against emerging threats such as terrorism and international crime have fallen to agencies with little subject-matter expertise. Current U.S. laws block more effective support for training civilian law enforcement in democratically governed countries. And a Cold War-era treaty that narrowly addresses aggression by states outside the hemisphere encumbers more effective multilateral cooperation.

President George W. Bush's National Security Strategy acknowledges that the global war on terrorism cannot be won by the United States alone.1 America's neighbors cannot meet that challenge and still confront a host of other threats.

To better secure the United States and the hemisphere, the Bush Administration and Congress should review missions and responsibilities and reallocate efforts to develop a more cooperative partnership with hemispheric neighbors. Key elements of reform should be to:1

Revitalize the U.S. Southern Command to make it a more effective partner in promoting security in the Latin American region;
Shift management of security missions to agencies with the subject-matter expertise to deal with them;
Develop subregional partnerships to promote routine military-to-military, civilian agency-to-civilian agency cooperation that incorporates common standards and operating procedures;
Amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to allow more targeted and flexible support for civilian law enforcement in democratically governed countries; and
Promote revision of the 1947 Inter-American (Rio) Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance to address modern security needs.
What is at Stake
For the United States
In the wake of the Cold War, Latin America has been peripheral to U.S. national security concerns. Soviet support for armed insurgencies no longer exists, and with the exception of Cuba, almost all of the region's countries are at least electoral democracies as opposed to dictatorships. There are good reasons, however, why the U.S. should pay greater attention to threats from the South.

At least seven major terrorist organizations have an active presence in the region, including three with ties to transnational Islamic terrorist groups.2 In 2002, the Brazilian government arrested Hesham al-Tarabili, a suspected agent of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, who is believed to have been involved in the 1997 attack on tourists in Luxor, Egypt.3 Although Latin America has not been used to launch attacks directly at the United States, it serves as a support base for criminals, illegal armies, and terrorist groups.

According to Ambassador Cofer Black, U.S. Department of State Coordinator for Counterterrorism:

Terrorists in this hemisphere are becoming more active in illicit transnational activities, principally the drug trade, but also arms trafficking, money laundering, contraband smuggling, and document and currency fraud. Not only do these provide sources of income, but terrorists also take advantage of their well-established underground supply routes to move funds, people and arms across borders.4
Other security interests include the future peace and economic success of a region that comprises 800 million people. Mexico is America's second largest trading partner behind Canada. Although the rest of Latin America accounts for less than 6 percent of U.S. world trade, there is potential for much more. Nearly 30 percent of America's crude oil imports, more than the United States receives from the Persian Gulf, come from Latin America.5

Regrettably, however, an estimated 300 metric tons of illegal drugs also reach the United States through its southern border, contributing to about 20,000 deaths every year, not to mention an estimated $160 billion in related costs.6

For Latin America
The flowering of democracy and economic growth portended peace, stability, and broad-based prosperity. Yet gains over the past 20 years are in danger of unraveling into rising unemployment and the re-emergence of autocratic regimes.7

For one thing, regional troublemakers like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have reportedly been fanning flames of social unrest by encouraging indigenous activists in Bolivia and Ecuador to rise up against elected leaders. Chavez's own security forces have allegedly given safe haven and material support to Colombia's FARC guerrillas, and his government is supporting the Castro regime by selling oil to Cuba at concessionary prices on generous credit terms even though Cuba has been unable to pay most of the bill. In exchange, Fidel Castro has sent more than 10,000 doctors, teachers, and intelligence specialists to Venezuela and advises Chavez on domestic and foreign policy.8

While free trade agreements have provided opportunities for growth, lagging economic reforms have blocked the rise of living standards in such countries as Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Venezuela, and even, to some degree, in Mexico.9 Nearly half of the region's inhabitants live in poverty. To help support them, relatives living in the United States send back about $32 billion in remittances each year, but that does not compensate for the absence of a broad middle class--or its destruction, as happened in Argentina following its 2000 financial collapse. Large populations living on the margin are an inadequate tax-base to support public institutions.

As a result, poorly supported security forces such as those in Bolivia and Ecuador are unable to project state authority throughout national territory, leaving vast rural areas at the mercy of criminals, subversives, and terrorists. In some countries, security forces involved in civil wars in the 1980s have been reduced in strength and reorganized to separate the police from the military in order to follow the U.S. model; but new civilian law enforcement was not established in time to counter the spread of gangs, as well as narcotics and arms traffickers, particularly in El Salvador and Honduras.

Scant disaster preparedness and health infrastructure is another problem. A virulent, biological attack on the United States might easily work its way south, with potentially devastating consequences on countries with limited health facilities.10 Drug trafficking that once was focused on the lucrative North American market is shifting south where narcotics use is now greater than in the United States. Arms smuggling and human trafficking are increasing as well. The U.S.-Mexico border is the focal point for firearms trafficking into Mexico and the smuggling of persons into the United States.

Post-September 11 measures taken by the United States have affected Latin America as well. U.S. demands for added security at overseas ports and screening of agricultural products have drawn complaints that Washington is foisting its own cost of self-protection onto governments that can ill afford the expense. Latin American leaders say the United States is making it difficult for developing countries to compete in the global economy by "pushing out" its borders with new security restrictions.

Washington's Eroded Security Strategy
Military Command Quandary
Since 1941, what be-came the U.S. Southern Co-mmand (SOUTHCOM) has overseen and coordinated U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and south of Mexico to the Straits of Magellan. Formerly headquartered in Panama along with two Air Force bases and extensive army and navy facilities, it moved to Miami, Florida, with the handoff of the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. By then, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) had turned over the bases and other military property to Panama, and the U.S. Army South (USARSO) and other components had relocated to various sites in the United States and the Caribbean. Panamanian leaders wanted the United States to pay in order to stay. Senior U.S. policymakers decided that retaining assets like Howard Air Force base, useful for launching counterdrug surveillance flights, was not worth it.

Through the 1980s, SOUTHCOM not only collaborated with DOD security assistance agencies, but also funded and coordinated military exercises, personnel exchanges, deployment of training teams, and guided military actions on the ground. Since the early 1990s, when security assistance took on a counternarcotics character, civilian agencies like the Department of State and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency assumed some of SOUTHCOM's responsibilities. Thus, since moving to a suburban office park in Miami, it has played less of a direct role in security assistance and more of a supporting one.

Now the Pentagon is contemplating abolishing SOUTHCOM and making the entire Western Hemisphere the responsibility of a new unified command.11 After the September 11 attacks on the United States, the DOD created the Northern Command (NORTHCOM) under the unified command plan (UCP), which prescribes the geographic boundaries and functions of the combatant commands charged with conducting U.S. military operations worldwide.12 NORTHCOM is mostly a coordinating structure with no resources or command elements for conducting exercises, foreign liaison, international intelligence gathering, or collaborating in security assistance to foreign nations. For now, SOUTHCOM's demise would remove what focus there is for regional engagement on security matters.

Confused Lines of Authority
Over the past decades, judicious military engagement led by SOUTHCOM has assisted in building military capacity, but now the command lacks adequate resources to continue that function as well as prosecute the global war on terrorism. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the interagency process, the means by which federal agencies determine how to work together, is declining. The Department of State's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau (INL) has assumed greater authority over police and military assistance programs, creating an overly complicated multi-agency assistance chain that blocks the timely delivery of support and training.

Today, counternarcotics and counterterrorism are the major security concerns in the region, and the Department of State--with a sluggish internal financial system and without the support resources, training, doctrine, standardized procedures, and evaluation mechanisms characteristic of the U.S. military--is the lead agency. Assisting either directly or through contractors is a proliferating array of government entities, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms among others. Throughout the Andean region, contractors substituting for U.S. military and police personnel have lost crews and aircraft in accidents that could have been prevented through more unified supervision and by prioritizing safety and mission success over expediency.13

While federal and local law enforcement and military agencies have been learning to cooperate on countering terrorism in the United States since September 11, U.S. diplomats and military representatives in Latin America are still encouraging the region's new democracies to sever once-close ties between their armed forces and police. Such changes may have resulted in better civilian oversight and improved respect for human rights, but the spread of stateless criminal organizations has taxed their capabilities before new forces, procedures, and lines of communication have had time to gel. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which used to cooperate with the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development on justice system reform and law enforcement training--critical elements in curbing terrorism in Latin America--has refocused its foreign programs on Eastern Europe.

Tutorial Relations.
Military-to-military relations still manifest an assistance-focused mindset--what Jay Cope, fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, calls a "deep belief that the United states must tutor, supply, and in many ways aid, or manipulate the region's institutions."14 This approach is a holdover from the Cold War, and even earlier, when Latin American armies were largely unprofessional and served to enforce loyalty to dictators and powerful political groups. A combination of assistance and pressure to abandon politics leveraged existing local efforts into transforming most Latin American armies into more modern public institutions at the service of elected leaders.

Nonetheless, the Pentagon still keeps Latin American militaries at arm's length, leading mostly to one-way exchanges based on equipment donations, training exercises, personnel exchanges, and ship visits. There is little U.S. consultation with the region's elected leaders over security matters unless it involves fighting drug trafficking--something in which the United States has been keenly interested. More comprehensive relationships between the U.S. and Latin American militaries are more the exception than the rule, depending on the U.S. ambassador in country and the U.S. Military Group commander.

U.S. development assistance is even less effective. Where used to construct infrastructure, it focuses on turnkey operations with little follow-up. U.S. aid has funded road-building in Latin America since the 1960s, but local governments often fail to maintain what has been built. This practice overlooked the region's military engineers and medical practitioners, who share a command structure that could do these jobs and respond to threats such as terrorism and natural disasters in ways that the private sector will not and fledgling civilian bureaucracies cannot. The United States could take advantage of this synergy more effectively through the strategic use of military road-building exercises such as Nuevos Horizontes, yet budgets for these programs have been declining.

Roadblocks to Productive Engagement
Section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits advising and training foreign police except as exempted by legislation--a policy based on the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which correctly sought to limit Army abuses against civilians during Reconstruction following the U.S. Civil War. Section 660 specifically addresses concerns over U.S. training given to foreign police that subsequently committed human rights abuses.

As sensible as Section 660 appeared when enacted, however, it now distorts U.S. security assistance programs. Three-quarters of SOUTHCOM's funding is earmarked for counternarcotics use--mostly a law enforcement function--which means that SOUTHCOM cannot easily use those funds. For instance, U.S. Army units may not directly provide human rights training to foreign police units without enabling legislation. Transfer of surplus equipment from military inventories and by military means is similarly restricted, while U.S. assistance to foreign police is limited by the fact that American law enforcement is largely community-based and has no foreign operations component.

Outdated Accord
The 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance was meant to invoke a collective response against a threat from outside the hemisphere. That made sense when the Soviet Union was arming subversives to install communist governments in Latin America, but with the failure of such movements in the 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the threat of extra-hemispheric aggression receded.

Just prior to September 11, Mexican President Vicente Fox suggested simply scrapping the Rio Treaty. Today, an agreement to provide cooperative assistance to neighbors facing terrorism, transnational crime, or natural disasters seems more appropriate.

In the background, the Organization of American States has passed more than 90 resolutions on various aspects of security since 1995, from non-proliferation to clearing land mines; but without money to pay for specific measures and the political will to persuade voters at home to adopt them, such resolutions are little more than promises. A treaty requires local legislative approval and action, and thus could form the basis for common procedures and support mechanisms.

However, a NATO-like pact is unlikely in the near term. For one thing, there is the problem of asymmetry. For many Latin American leaders, the economically and militarily powerful United States seems like a gorilla in the sandbox. These leaders see U.S. attempts to forge an Inter-American security system as a precursor to violations of their sovereignty--a concept many Latin American countries are only now attempting to define.15 For another, some countries are attempting to define their mutual security relations, such as Argentina with Brazil and Venezuela with Cuba.

Furthermore, broad agreement on security is lacking. Some, like Mexico, define it as defending internal order.16 Others, like Argentina, view it as protecting borders. Some, like El Salvador, try to guard against a range of threats, from external aggression to natural disasters. Recently, representatives to the Organization of American States (OAS) made progress by agreeing on a declaration listing eight threats at the OAS's Special Conference on Security in Mexico City on October 27-28, 2003.17

Finally, multilateral bodies like the OAS-affiliated Inter-American Defense Board and the OAS Commission on Hemispheric Security serve mainly as forums, not action focal points. The OAS does not often coordinate with the military-dominated Defense Board, reflecting a lingering lack of trust between civilians and soldiers. Moreover, the OAS Permanent Council handles all urgent security issues.

Toward Shared Responsibility
The United States and its hemispheric neighbors bear mutual responsibility for strengthening security without creating impediments that might strangle legitimate trade and travel. One component of this challenge is to reduce internal threats to stability. Healthy political institutions and sound economies are key to defeating such threats; hence, the United States should encourage Latin America to go beyond elections to establish deeper democratic reforms and further open semi-market economies to remove sources of discontent and social conflict. To his credit, President Bush made that point at the Special Summit of the Americas on January 12-13 in Monterrey, Mexico.18

Successfully meeting the threats of terrorism, subversion, and transnational crime depends on developing a common capacity to assert control over national territory and strengthening justice systems to prosecute perpetrators. Because terrorist groups and transnational crime organizations have characteristics of both military organizations and domestic criminals, cooperation between military and civilian law enforcement agencies at the various levels is key--as U.S. policymakers are discovering in the development of U.S. homeland security capability.

However, working with other governments in this hemisphere to improve these capabilities depends on respecting their evolving democracies and trying to work within their constraints. This means both pursuing a more collaborative approach that puts sustained cooperation on an equal footing with training and developing a more organized framework to promote hemispheric
security.

To this end, the Bush Administration and Congress should:

Revitalize the U.S. Southern Command to make it a more effective partner in promoting hemispheric security. Northcom's primary focus is protecting the U.S. homeland and providing support to U.S. civil authorities. Eventually, that charge should be expanded to overseeing U.S. military relations with Canada and Mexico as partners in North American continental defense.
Closing down Southcom would throw U.S. military programs and goals in the region south of Mexico into disarray. Southcom could play a larger role in supporting U.S. military operations in Latin America by preparing to assume operational responsibility for military aspects of counternarcotics and counterterrorism missions. It must complement the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and State in developing routine collaborative relations instead of relying on tutorial ties.

Congress should restore funding for engineering and medical training and assist host country armed forces in building infrastructure and health systems to fight natural disasters and guard against biological warfare. Further improvements should include:

Solidifying SOUTHCOM's role in the Caribbean. While authority over parts of the Caribbean region was recently shifted to NORTHCOM, allowing it to oversee maritime security along the southern border, SOUTHCOM continues to supervise security cooperation programs, humanitarian assistance, and migration issues with the Caribbean island nations by mutual agreement. This arrangement makes sense and should remain part of the UCP.
Enhancing SOUTHCOM's role in drug and arms interdiction. Commanded by SOUTHCOM, Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) South includes operational and intelligence assets from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security and other federal agencies that detect, monitor, and interdict air and maritime smuggling activities. JIATF South is the ideal instrument for ensuring that there are no gaps between the drug interdiction efforts of NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM in the Caribbean area. JIATF South's mission should also include counterterrorism responsibilities.
Providing SOUTHCOM with greater flexibility in employing its resources. Traditionally, the lion's share of funding has been for counternarcotics operations and cannot be used for other activities, including counterterrorism. SOUTHCOM should be given greater flexibility in applying its available resources so that it can address security concerns in a more holistic manner.
Develop a comprehensive security relationship and shift management of security missions to experts. While drug trafficking and now terrorism are the main U.S. security priorities in Latin America, they should not be the only dimension of U.S. security relations as was the case between America and Colombia during the Clinton Administration. Such intense focus ignores support elements vital to sustaining counternarcotics and counterterrorism missions. Accordingly, U.S. decision makers should seek comprehensive relations that liaison with all elements of military, police, and civilian law enforcement agencies, not just counternarcotics units.
Congress and the Administration should also review whether the routine management of operational assets (e.g., aircraft, troops, and trainers) deployed in Andean countries should be moved from the Department of State to military or civilian agencies that have applicable doctrine, training, and procedures for combat and law enforcement activities--while also maintaining State's role as a coordinating agency through its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Even though contractors may continue to be useful in some temporary roles, security assistance to Andean nations should have added value in helping to build the local capacity of military and civilian law enforcement agencies to combat drug trafficking and terrorism. If support for counternarcotics and counterterrorism could be funded over a longer period to avoid frequent shutdowns, reliance on contractors might not be so necessary.

Improve intelligence collection. President Bush should direct America's intelligence agencies to cast a wider net. Although collection on Middle Eastern operatives in the border region between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay has increased, U.S. agencies failed to anticipate the April 11, 2001, uprising in Venezuela and have since been blind to changes occurring within President Chavez's inner circle and armed forces. Intelligence gathering on the Castro regime has yet to provide details concerning Cuba's reported coordination of leftist movements in Latin America or the support given by Colombian proxies to violent groups in Bolivia.19
Develop bilateral and subregional partnerships. Periodic training exercises and ship visits still serve a purpose, but the United States should move beyond them to promote routine military-to-military, civilian agency-to-civilian agency cooperation that will help develop common standards and operating procedures in security matters among willing states. U.S. embassy country teams should promote security assistance/cooperation in a more holistic way, encouraging cooperation among U.S. military representatives and civilian law enforcement attaches under the rubric of homeland security instead of counternarcotics. Perhaps approaching Latin American allies through less stove-piped channels will make them more likely to share and act on common goals in securing the hemisphere, such as eliminating disparities in border security, legal and financial regulatory regimes, and intelligence sharing.20
Amend Section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to allow more targeted and flexible support for training and assisting the police of foreign democratic governments to ensure their inclusion in a broad range of programs from surplus equipment delivery to human rights seminars for civilian law enforcement in democratically governed countries. Current broad restrictions keep U.S. military units from providing any kind of training or assistance to foreign police units without enabling legislation, while American law enforcement, which is largely community-based, cannot deal effectively with foreign counterparts. Restrictions should be fine-tuned to permit U.S. military cooperation where useful.
Promote revision of the 1947 Rio Treaty to address modern security needs. Leader summits, defense ministerial conferences, and OAS resolutions have served to highlight security needs without requiring action to do anything about them. The Rio Treaty should be rewritten to provide a flexible framework for mutual cooperation beyond extra-hemispheric aggression to include protocols for mutual assistance on emerging threats such as terrorism, organized crime, drug and arms trafficking, and the smuggling of humans. Through its Permanent Representative and military mission to the Inter-American Defense Board, the Bush Administration can urge the OAS to take up this important work. Subsequently, those countries wishing to broaden cooperation can have their congresses ratify a new document.
Conclusion
The United States is closely tied to its hemispheric neighbors through geography, shared history, and trade. The security of the neighborhood in which America exists cannot be ignored. To defend the U.S. homeland and help hemispheric allies meet similar challenges, the United States needs a new strategy that treats nascent democracies differently from the dictatorships they once were, meets the new threats from within the region, and moves beyond current tutorial and assistance relations toward sustained collaboration.

SOUTHCOM plays an important role in securing the U.S. southern flank from a multitude of transnational threats. To address the dangers facing America in the 21st century, the command's organization and operation need to be revitalized and better integrated with other national activities. While the United States has spent 20 years encouraging the separation of military and police functions in Latin America, it should rethink how it will work with each country's unique security architecture.

U.S. policymakers must sort out and clarify America's approach to hemispheric threats while persuading multinational forums on regional security to develop a new basis for achieving that goal. Failure to move forward on such an agenda will give terrorists and criminals the upper hand.

James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow for National Security and Homeland Security, and Stephen Johnson is Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America, in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
-------------------------

1. The Administration's security strategy states: "While our focus is protecting America, we know that to defeat terrorism in today's globalized world we need support from our allies and friends. Wherever possible, the United States will rely on regional organizations and state powers to meet their obligations to fight terrorism. Where governments find the fight against terrorism beyond their capacities, we will match their willpower and their resources with whatever help we and our allies can provide." National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002, at www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.

2. The National Liberation Army (Colombia), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the Shining Path (Peru), HAMAS (transnational Middle East), Hezballah (transnational Middle East), and the Egyptian Islamic Group (Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya, affiliated with Osama bin Laden). See U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2002, pp. 65-74.

3. Ibid., p. 72.

4. Ambassador Cofer Black, "Remarks to the OAS Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE)," 4th Regular Session, Montevideo, Uruguay, January 29, 2004.

5. U.S. Department of Energy, Petroleum Supply Monthly, December 2003.

6. U.S. Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, International Narcotics Control and Strategy Report, 2002, March 2003, at www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2002/html (January 23, 2004), and Office of National Drug Control Policy, "Drug Data Summary," fact sheet, March 2003, p. 2.

7. For an interesting analysis, see Cresencio Arcos and Caesar Sereseres, "Managing or Shaping U.S.-Latin American Relations," Colleagues for the Americas Seminar Series, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2003, at www.ndu.edu/inss/Repository/INSS_Proceedings/Colleagues_of_the_
Americas/CA_Apr03/CA_Report_Apr03.html (February 12, 2004).

8. Alexei Barrionuevo and Jose de Cordoba, "For Aging Castro, Chavez Emerges As a Vital Crutch," The Wall Street Journal,
February 2, 2004, p. 1.

9. Despite 10 years of economic expansion under the North American Free Trade Agreement, living standards and job growth have failed to increase without attendant reforms to curb corruption, open state monopolies to private investment, and establish the rule of law. See Stephen Johnson and Sara J. Fitzgerald, "The United States and Mexico: Partners in Reform," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1715, December 18, 2003, at www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/BG1715.cfm .

10. Even without the application of bioweapons, pathogens could present more significant problems as the potential for diseases to spread rapidly is increasing. A number of factors are driving this trend, including the growth in global trade helping to spread diseases, growing resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs, demographic changes, population growth and migration, and deteriorating public health infrastructure worldwide. See Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology, National Science and Technology Council, Global Microbial Threats in the 1990s, September 13, 2000, p. 2, at www.ostp.gov/CISET/html/3.html. See also George Fidas, remarks before the International Disease Surveillance and Global Security Conference, Stanford University, Stanford, California, May 11-12, 2001, p. 8, and David F. Gordon et al., The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Intelligence Council, 2000), passim.

11. James Jay Carafano, "Shaping the Future of Northern Command," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Backgrounder, April 29, 2003, p. 3, at www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Archive/B.20030429.NORTHCOM/B.20030429.
NORTHCOM.pdf.

12. W. Spencer Johnson, "New Challenges for the Unified Command Plan," Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 2002, p. 63.

13. Two single-engine Cessna aircraft operated by U.S. contractors gathering intelligence were lost in rugged territory in Colombia under guerrilla control on February 14 and March 25, 2003. Neither plane was suitable for combat operations in mountains. See Scott Wilson, "Three Americans Are Killed in Plane Crash in Colombia," The Washington Post, March 27, 2003, p. A18. On April 20, 2001, a Peruvian Air Force A-37 fighter, guided by a CIA-contracted surveillance aircraft, mistakenly shot down a light plane carrying a U.S. missionary and family members. As a result, the Peruvian air bridge denial program was shut down for more than two years. See Karen DeYoung, "Senate Committee Looking into Drug Interdiction Pact with Peru," The Washington Post, April 26, 2001, p. A21.

14. John A. Cope, "Hemispheric Security Relations: Remodeling the U.S. Framework for the Americas," National Defense University Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Forum, No. 147 (September 1998), p. 2.

15. Marcela Donadio, "Comentarios sobre la Conferencia Especial sobre Seguridad," Boletin RESDAL, Vol. 2, No. 13 (November/December 2003), p. 7.

16. At the OAS Special Conference on Hemispheric Security, October 28-29, 2003, in Mexico City, President Fox said: "Of course, our security depends on how well we tackle such scourges as drug trafficking, illegal trafficking in weapons and people, terrorism and organized transnational crime in general...but it depends, mostly, on our ability to reverse the serious inequity, poverty and underdevelopment that beset our nations. These are the main threats to stability and governance in our countries and our communities." Press release, "Mexican President Stresses Importance of `Comprehensive Security,'" Organization of American States, Mexico City, October 29, 2003.

17. These eight threats are terrorism, conflict between states, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, transnational crime, arms trafficking, natural disasters, attacks on health, and poverty. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, "Results of the OAS Special Conference on Security," fact sheet, October 29, 2003.

18. George W. Bush, "Remarks at Summit of the Americas Ceremony," The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Monterrey, Mexico, January 12, 2004, at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040112-9.html (February 5, 2004).

19. "Police Arrest a Colombian, Four Bolivians for Alleged Subversive Plot," BBC Worldwide Monitoring, April 13, 2003, from the Bolivian Information Ministry, April 10, 2003.

20. As a start toward that objective, at the 2002 Defense Ministerial meeting in Santiago, Chile, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld proposed an initiative to foster regional naval cooperation. The initiative would study ways to strengthen planning, upgrade command and control systems, and improve information sharing among the region's navies, coast guards, customs services, and police forces. Donald H. Rumsfeld, "Statement by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Santiago, Chile, November 19, 2002," Office of the Secretary of Defense, Public Affairs, November 19, 2002. For more concrete recommendations on how relations can be improved, see Max G. Manwaring, Wendy Fontela, Mary Grizzard, and Dennis Rempe, "Building Regional Security Cooperation in the Western Hemisphere: Issues and Recommendations," Special Series: Shaping the Regional Security Environment in Latin America, U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, North-South Center, October 2003.



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>> SAUDI PROOF PORTFOLIOS?

Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields
By JEFF GERTH
When visitors tour the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's oil empire -- a sleek glass building rising from the desert in Dhahran near the Persian Gulf -- they are reminded of its mission in a film projected on a giant screen. "We supply what the world demands every day," it declares.
For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay of the global energy markets.
But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.
Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably stall near current levels, potentially creating a significant gap in the global energy supply.
Outsiders have not had access to detailed production data from Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, for more than 20 years. But interviews in recent months with experts on Saudi oil fields provided a rare look inside the business and suggested looming problems.
An internal Saudi Aramco plan, the experts said, estimates total production capacity in 2011 at 10.15 million barrels a day, about the current capacity. But to meet expected world demand, the United States Department of Energy's research arm says Saudi Arabia will need to produce 13.6 million barrels a day by 2010 and 19.5 million barrels a day by 2020.
"In the past, the world has counted on Saudi Arabia," one senior Saudi oil executive said. "Now I don't see how long it can be maintained."
Saudi Arabia, the leading exporter for three decades, is not running out of oil. Industry officials are finding, however, that it is becoming more difficult or expensive to extract it. Today, the country produces about eight million barrels a day, roughly one-tenth of the world's needs. It is the top foreign supplier to the United States, the world's leading energy consumer.
Fears of a future energy gap could, of course, turn out to be unfounded. Predictions of oil market behavior have often proved wrong.
But if Saudi production falls short, industry experts say the consequences could be significant. Other large producers, like Russia and Iraq, do not have Saudi Aramco's huge reserves or excess oil capacity to export, and promising new fields elsewhere are not expected to deliver enough oil to make up the difference.
As a result, supplies could tighten and oil prices could increase. The global economy could feel the ripples; previous spikes in oil prices have helped cause recessions, though high oil prices in the last year or so have not slowed strong growth.
Saudi Aramco says its dominance in world oil markets will grow because, "if required," it can expand its capacity to 12 million barrels a day or more by "making necessary investments," according to written responses to questions submitted by The New York Times.
But some experts are skeptical. Edward O. Price Jr., a former top Saudi Aramco and Chevron executive and a leading United States government adviser, says he believes that Saudi Arabia can pump up to 12 million barrels a day "for a few years." But "the world should not expect more from the Saudis," he said. He expects global oil markets to be in short supply by 2015.
Fatih Birol, the chief economist for the International Energy Agency, said the Saudis would not be able to increase production enough for future needs without large-scale foreign investment.
The I.E.A., an independent agency founded by energy-consuming nations, and Washington see investment in energy exploration and field maintenance as vital, but such proposals face strong opposition inside Saudi Arabia. Tensions with the West, particularly the United States, make such investment politically difficult for Saudi society. For example, an effort by Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler, to encourage Western companies to invest $25 billion in his country's natural gas industry essentially collapsed last year.
"Access to Persian Gulf oil reserves, especially Saudi Arabia's, is the key question for the whole world," Dr. Birol said.
President Bush has said he wants to make the United States less reliant on oil-producing countries that "don't like America" by diversifying suppliers and financing research into hydrogen fuel cells, but achieving that remains far off.
His administration backs foreign investment initiatives in the gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, and his energy policies rely on Energy Department projections showing the world even more dependent on Arabian oil in 20 years. That may be enough time for governments to find alternatives, but oil field development requires years of planning and work.
Publicly, Saudi oil executives express optimism about the future of their industry. Some economists are equally optimistic that if oil prices rise high enough, advanced recovery techniques will be applied, averting supply problems.
But privately, some Saudi oil officials are less sanguine.
"We don't see us as the ones making sure the oil is there for the rest of the world," one senior executive said in an interview. A Saudi Aramco official cautioned that even the attempt to get up to 12 million barrels a day would "wreak havoc within a decade," by causing damage to the oil fields.
In an unusual public statement, Sadad al-Husseini, Saudi Aramco's second-ranking executive and its leading geologist, warned at an oil conference in Jakarta in 2002 that global "natural declines in existing capacity are real and must be replaced."
Dr. al-Husseini, one Western oil expert said, has been "the brains of Saudi Aramco's exploration and production." But he has told associates that he plans to resign soon, and his departure, government oil experts in the United States and Saudi Arabia say, could hinder Saudi efforts to bolster production or entice foreign investment.
Saudi Arabia's reported proven reserves, more than 250 billion barrels, are one-fourth of the world's total. The most significant is Ghawar. Discovered in 1948, the 300-mile-long sliver near the Persian Gulf is the world's largest oil field and accounts for more than half of the kingdom's production.
The company told The New York Times that its field production practices, including those at Ghawar, were "at optimum levels" and the risk of steep declines was negligible. But Mr. Price, the former vice president for exploration and production at Saudi Aramco, says that North Ghawar, the most valuable section of the field, was pushed too hard in the past.
"Instead of spreading the production to other fields or areas," Mr. Price said, the Saudis concentrated on North Ghawar. That "accelerated the depletion rate and the time to uncontrolled decline," or the point where the field's production drops dramatically, he said.
In Saudi Arabia, seawater is injected into the giant fields to help move the oil toward the top of the reservoir. But over time, the volume of water that is lifted along with the oil increases, and the volume of oil declines proportionally. Eventually, it becomes uneconomical to extract the oil. There is also a risk that the field can become unstable and collapse.
Ghawar is still far too productive to abandon. But because of increasing problems with managing the water, one Saudi oil executive said, "Ghawar is becoming very costly to maintain."
The average decline rate in Saudi Aramco's mature fields -- Ghawar and a few others -- "is in the range of 8 percent per year," without additional remediation, according to the company's statement. This means several hundred thousand barrels of daily oil production would have to be added every year just to make up for the diminished output.
Every oil field is unique, and experts cannot predict how long each might last. For its part, Saudi Aramco is counting on Ghawar for years to come.
The company projects that Ghawar will continue to produce more than half its oil. One internal company estimate from 2002 puts Ghawar's production at 5.25 million barrels a day in 2011, more than half the total expected crude oil capacity of 10.15 million, according to United States government officials and oil executives.
"The big risk in Saudi Arabia is that Ghawar's rate of decline increases to an alarming point," said Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari, a senior official with the National Iranian Oil Company. "That will set bells ringing all over the oil world because Ghawar underpins Saudi output and Saudi undergirds worldwide production."
The I.E.A. warned in November that huge investments would be needed to offset the decline rates in mature Middle Eastern oil fields -- it put the average at 5 percent -- and the increasing costs of oil and gas production. The agency, based in Paris, forecasts that Saudi production will need to reach 20 million barrels a day by 2020. (I.E.A. and other research estimates say that more than 90 percent of that would be crude oil; the rest would be liquid products like natural gas liquids that result from the processing of crude oil.)
In his speech in Jakarta, Dr. al-Husseini noted the need for exploration, pointing out that colleagues at Exxon Mobil predict that more than 50 percent of oil and gas consumption in 2010 must come from new fields and reservoirs.
Harry A. Longwell, the executive vice president of Exxon Mobil, says finding new sources of oil is crucial. Mr. Longwell, in an interview, said that increasing demand and declining production were not new problems, but they were "much larger now because of the world's demand for energy and the magnitude of the numbers now are much larger."
To offset its declines, Saudi Aramco is bringing back into production one idle field, Qatif, and is enhancing production at a nearby offshore field, Abu Safah. The company says that with expert management, these fields will produce about 800,000 barrels a day.
But current and former Saudi Aramco executives question those expectations, contending that the goal of 500,000 barrels a day for Qatif is unrealistic and that development costs are higher than anticipated.
Qatif poses real difficulties. It is near housing for Saudi Arabia's minority Shiite population and contains high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, a highly toxic gas. Its development is "particularly challenging," according to a technical paper by Saudi Aramco engineers presented last year in Bahrain, which said that 45 percent of potential drilling sites "were rejected due to safety concerns."
At Abu Safah, Saudi Aramco has experienced increasing water problems as it has turned to submersible pumps to extract oil. Experts, including American and Saudi government officials, say the technique is ill advised. Saudi Aramco, in its written response to questions, defended the use of the pumps at Abu Safah and its ability to manage the water after 37 years of production.
One United Sates government energy expert noted that "submersible pumps is what the Soviets went to on an indiscriminate basis in West Siberia and it went south." Samotlor, a huge field in Siberia, once produced more than three million barrels a day, but it declined sharply in the 1980's after the Soviets pushed it too hard. Today it produces only a few hundred thousand barrels a day.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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15 drillers to fuel your portfolio

Natural-gas exploration is still a crapshoot, but the stakes have grown tantalizingly higher. Back the right stock and both of you emerge big winners.

By Jon D. Markman

For investors interested in intellectually-advantaged speculation seasoned with a dash of geopolitical gaming, it may be time to step on the gas.

The broad-brush reasons for taking positions in small-cap North American energy exploration companies has been in place for some time, as China has emerged as a voracious devourer of energy, Saudi Arabian turmoil has intensified (See "Saud's royal house of cards"), U.S. state governments have demanded wider use of clean-burning fuels by power plants and environmental laws have tightened supplies.

Early-bird speculators have therefore pushed up prices of some of the best little explorers, such as Ultra Petroleum (UPL, news, msgs) and Callon Petroleum (CPE, news, msgs) by as much as 100% over the past 10 months. But most of these stocks have cooled recently, providing a new entry point for a second wave of investors and traders seeking a hedge against overseas uncertainty.

To be sure, drillers defile the landscape of some of the most gorgeous places on earth like filthy rows of steel stinkbugs. Yet they are a necessary evil, angels disguised as devils, and their ugliness masks opportunity.

Natural gas' increasing value
Big picture first: Back in the 1940s, natural gas was worth virtually nothing. Drillers burned it off in the process of exploring for petroleum. As new uses were discovered, it became increasingly valuable, rising from $2 per 1,000 cubic feet on average during the 1990s to $10 in 2000. The price collapsed in 2001 back to $2, but it has steadily risen since -- spiking above $10 at the start of last year's war in Iraq before settling back to around $5.25, where it is now.Your money, fast.

The price of natural gas always jumps during winter cold snaps, which accounted for its most recent foray above $5.75, but it's unlikely to collapse below its current trading range again because there's not enough drilling being done to satisfy demand due to tough environment laws. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress back in June that tight supply threatened the U.S. economy.

An `all or nothing' world
All gas drillers are not equal, and it pays to understand the industry's superstructure, risks and leverage points. Just as technology investors are accustomed to learning about the varied makers of semiconductors, disk drives and switches that make components for popular consumer electronics devices and determining which offer the most oomph at various points in the economic cycle, energy investors must learn about the complex, high-risk way gas is discovered and distributed.

Lesson No. 1, though, is how truly speculative some of these guys are. The companies are usually run by cagy industry veterans -- some with checkered pasts -- who suspect they can use new high-tech 3-D seismic imaging tools to find gas formations in properties abandoned by much larger drillers, such as Exxon Mobil (XOM, news, msgs) or ChevronTexaco (CVX, news, msgs). At the start of new projects, observers are skeptical that the driller will even find financing to start the project. Then, they're skeptical they'll persuade an oil-services company to lease them a drilling rig. Then, they're skeptical that drilling will ever actually start. Then, they're skeptical that the project will ever be completed. And then -- and lastly, they wait anxiously to learn whether gas is discovered or not.

Drilling is thus a crapshoot of probability distributions, and as each critical hurdle is cleared, energy speculators become more interested, adding to their positions and pushing up stock prices. The big moment comes when the company announces whether it has hit pay dirt or come up dry. The final press release announcing the success or failure of a new well is like the one that is published when a biotech company tells the world whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its cure for cancer. It's all or nothing, hero or goat.

Canadian Superior Energy
Canadian Superior Energy (SNG, news, msgs) is typical of this high-risk/high-reward world. The company, which already owned leases to drill in Trinidad and western Canada, obtained four offshore exploration licenses totaling 933,000 acres in relatively shallow water off Nova Scotia a few years ago. In April last year, it announced it had teamed with gas pipeline giant El Paso (EP, news, msgs) to drill an extremely deep well -- about 18,000 feet -- in a property off Halifax known as Mariner Prospect. In June, Canadian Superior cleared a big hurdle by announcing that El Paso would provide half the project's $30 million cost for half the profits, and in November it cleared further hurdles by completing a $14 million private placement, securing a drilling rig from Rowan (RDC, news, msgs) and started to drill. The stock over this period went from 80 cents to $3.03; it's now around $2.65.

The largest institutional shareholder of the stock, at 6.5% of the outstanding shares, is Palo Alto Investors (PAI), a private, value-oriented hedge fund in Northern California. David Anderson, the analyst on the hook for the investment at PAI, says he believes the value of the company's other properties in Western Canada provide the bedrock for the share price today, and the Nova Scotia project could add $5 to $8 if the company meets its goal of drilling into the middle of a formation with 1 trillion cubic feet of gas. "As a value player, we see a lot of optionality," he said, meaning that the stock is like a call option on the Mariner project.

Two weeks ago, Anderson flew out to the rig on a helicopter in 60 mph winds and hung around for a while despite 30-foot seas. He said he learned Canadian had 4,000 more feet to drill, that the drilling personnel were "fantastic" and that there have been "gas shows" along the way. But he said that neither he, the crew bosses nor company executives had any idea yet whether the project would be successful. "It's sort of like the swordsman who lives to fight another day," he said. "Every day they drill without doing anything wrong removes a little uncertainty, but until they get to 18,000 feet and do some expensive tests there, it's still just a speculation."

Cheap, strong explorers
The day of truth will come in about three weeks. In the meantime, Anderson, whose hedge fund was up 90% last year and has compounded returns of 25% over the past 14 years, has been quietly investing in several other exploration ventures that he declined to reveal. He primarily buys drillers with high "recycle ratios." It's a simple concept: Find companies with proven ability to replace the oil or gas they're extracting from the ground for much less than the production costs and the expected future commodity price. If you can sell gas for $5.50 that costs $1.50 to find and make, you can use some of the profits to explore for more. "The key thing is to replace your depleted asset at low costs, and if you can provably do that repeatedly -- fantastic," Anderson said. And, he added, all the information necessary to make such judgments can be found in the footnotes of explorers' annual 10K filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Not including the ones he's currently buying, Anderson said he believes the strongest, least expensive explorers at this time are small caps PetroQuest Energy (PQUE, news, msgs), Patina Oil & Gas (POG, news, msgs), Wiser Oil (WZR, news, msgs), Harvest Natural Resources (HNR, news, msgs), Callon Petroleum and Meridian Resources (TMR, news, msgs); and midcaps Ultra Petroleum, XTO Energy (XTO, news, msgs), Evergreen Resources (EVG, news, msgs), Newfield Exploration (NFX, news, msgs) and Pogo Producing (PPP, news, msgs).

Ultra Petroleum is a good example. Although it has properties in Pennsylvania and China, Ultra's main asset is in the Pinedale Anticline of Wyoming, located southeast of Jackson Hole. A company typically does great if it hits oil in half the wells it sinks, but Ultra is virtually 100 for 100 in Wyoming and has more than 700 drilling prospects left. That makes it a "reserves growth" story that Anderson believes is worth $30 to $40 -- about 50% more than the current price. (His firm owns 1 million shares.) Likewise, Harvest Natural Resources is a low-cost producer off the coast of Venezuela that might be undervalued because of political risk stemming from the unstable regime of President Hugo Chavez. Anderson considers Chief Executive Peter Hill one of the industry's best.
Side bets abound. Consider drilling technology provider Carbo Ceramics (CRR, news, msgs), a small-cap maker of little clay balls that are used to prop open fractured rock underground, increasing oilfield yield. Or Golar LNG (GLNG, news, msgs) a fast-growing, profitable but inexpensive Norwegian shipping company that specializes in transporting liquefied natural gas. For returns less subject to the whims of commodity prices, check out large-caps Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs) and Schlumberger (SLB, news, msgs), without whose oilfield management and services expertise worldwide drilling would come to a standstill.
Over the rest of the year, I'll explore the industry further and visit some rigs for a more personal account. Initial ideas are listed in the table below.

Natural gas exploration picks
Company Market cap Chg. 2003 Scouter rating 2/17 price
PetroQuest Energy (PQUE, news, msgs) $114 million -13.8% 4 $2.84
Canadian Superior Energy (SNG, news, msgs) $233 million 149.5% 5 $2.56
Meridian Resource (TMR, news, msgs) $333 million 318.5% 4 $5.58
Wiser Oil (WZR, news, msgs) $126 million 141.1% 6 $8.17
Harvest Natural Resources (HNR, news, msgs) $393 million 73.7% 5 $11.58
Golar LNG (GLNG, news, msgs) $977 million 188.4% NA $16.19
Ultra Petroleum (UPL, news, msgs) $1.7 billion 140.2% 6 $25.84
XTO Energy (XTO, news, msgs) $4.8 billion 43.4% 9 $28.53
Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs) $13 billion 57.0% 10 $31.79
Evergreen Resources (EVG, news, msgs). $1.2 billion 49.4% 8 $35.10
Pogo Producing (PPP, news, msgs) $2.6 billion 12.7% 8 $44.83
Patina Oil & Gas (POG, news, msgs) $1.5 billion 68.6% 8 $49.46
Newfield Exploration (NFX, news, msgs) $2.6 billion 42.4% 8 $46.38
Carbo Ceramics (CRR, news, msgs) $911 million 77.1% 7 $59.55
Schlumberger (SLB, news, msgs) $35 billion 63.2% 8 $64.07



Jon D. Markman is publisher of StockTactics Advisor, an independent weekly investment newsletter, as well as senior strategist and portfolio manager at Pinnacle Investment Advisors. While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he welcomes column critiques and comments at jdm68@lycos.com. At the time of publication, Markman did not have positions in any securities mentioned in this column. His newsletter described Canadian Superior in its Dec. 3, 2003 issue.

17 Arrested for Smuggling North Korean Drug
By Byun Duk-kun
Staff Reporter
The police on Monday arrested 17 people suspected of smuggling more than 5 kilograms of drugs that originated in North Korea.
The Mapo Police Station in Seoul announced the 17 arrests included a 57-year-old drug trafficker, known as Lee. Officers arrested Lee on charges of smuggling and distributing 5.4 kilograms of methamphetamine, more commonly called ``philopon'' in South Korea, and booked nine others without detention.
The police booked nine people, including a 40-year-old head of a distribution company, identified by his surname Uhm, on charges of circulating and using the North Korean drug. The police confiscated 2.5 kilograms of philopon worth more than 12.5 billion won ($10.4 million) in market price.
The South Korean drug dealer, Lee, allegedly bought 5.4 kilograms of the illegal drug from a 40-year-old Korean-Chinese man, identified by his surname Lee, in China on three different occasions from February to September last year, according to the police.
The suspected South Korea drug dealer allegedly smuggled the illegal substance by hiding it among Chinese gems being imported to the country, according to the police.
The police said 5.4 kilograms of methamphetamine is enough to inject 180,000 people and is worth more than 25 billion won in market price.
The police also said it has secured a testimony from one of the arrested drug traffickers, identified by his surname Park, that the drug was from a large Chinese crime ring called ``Samhaphoi,'' and that its origin was North Korea.
The suspected South Korean drug dealer, Lee, is still on the loose in China. The South Korean police asked the Chinese police for cooperation in bringing down the suspected drug dealer.
benjamine@koreatimes.co.kr
02-23-2004 17:36

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Former Spy Agency Official Dismisses Ex-President's Role in Fund Scheme
By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
Former state agency official Kim Ki-sup on Mondayday dismissed former President Kim Young-sam's involvement in a 1996 illegal fund scheme, saying the man who gave 94 billion won ($80 million) in secret funds to then-ruling party lawmaker for the party's election campaign was not the former president, but himself.
He made the point clear in an affidavit he has submitted to the Seoul High Court, which is handling the case.
Kim's claims contradict an earlier testimony by the lawmaker Kang Sam-jae of the Grand National Party, who claimed during an appeal court hearing that he took the money in person from former president Kim at his office in Chong Wa Dae.
Kim and Kang are on a trial for their involvement in the high-profile scheme. It had been said the money originated from the state budget set for the National Security Planning, now the National Intelligence Agency, until Kang dropped the bombshell earlier this month.
Now speculations are rampant over the origin of the money. A rumor suggests the 94 billion won was part of the illegal election funds the former president secretly collected from businesses before 1996.
However, the former spy catcher dismissed all the rumors surrounding the ex-president, claiming that he directly gave the money over three occasions to Kang. He also made it clear that the money was from the budget of the spy agency.
``I ordered my subordinate to prepare the money all in 100 million-won checks in 1996,'' Kim said. ``I met Kang three times at three hotels in Seoul and delivered the money.''
Kang's lawyers dismissed Kim's claims as a show of loyalty for the former president.
The former president has yet to respond to the claims made in the affidavit. The appeal court plans to have former president Kim stand as a witness for a testimony in the next hearing set for March 12.
jj@koreatimes.co.kr
02-23-2004 21:52

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Bhutto alleges nuclear 'cover-up'
Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist AQ Khan could not have leaked nuclear secrets on his own, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto says.
Ms Bhutto said she believed senior government or military figures must have known what was going on.
"We believe there's a cover-up... there are certainly others involved," she told the BBC's Asia Today programme.
A government spokesman rejected the allegations and said the scientist had acted independently throughout.
Dr Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, was pardoned in January after admitting leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Many observers are sceptical that he could have done what he says he did without the powerful military knowing.
'Real culprits'
Ms Bhutto said she wanted the matter investigated further - but she doubted any light would be shed on the role of President Pervez Musharraf, whom she accused of being "reckless".
"General Musharraf would like the world to believe that Dr Khan is responsible for the export of nuclear technology, but nobody in Pakistan buys that," she told the BBC.
I'd like to know whether the president or the prime minister changed that policy [of no nuclear exports] or whether the army acted in defiance
Former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto
The scientist was a scapegoat who people thought had been carrying out orders, she said.
The fact he had been pardoned sent the wrong message to would-be exporters of weapons of mass destruction.
"We want the real culprits identified so that this can never happen again."
Ms Bhutto said she had run a policy of "no exports of nuclear technology" when she had been in power.
"I'd like to know whether the president or the prime minister changed that policy or whether the army acted in defiance of the president or prime minister, or whether intelligence acted as an independent operator."
Ms Bhutto, one of President Musharraf's bitterest critics, has been living in self-imposed exile in Britain and the United Arab Emirates since 1999. She faces a string of corruption cases if she returns to Pakistan.
'Dishonest"
The Pakistani government has said throughout the scandal that Dr Khan and other scientists acted entirely of their own accord.
Speaking to the same programme, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed denied any cover-up.
"Not a single government was involved in this nuclear proliferation - that was a personal act of these two or three scientists."
He accused Ms Bhutto of being corrupt, dishonest and power-hungry, and of manipulating the media.
Pakistan had launched investigations when it had been informed of possible wrongdoing by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the minister said.
Meanwhile, a court in Pakistan has rejected petitions filed by the families of six detained scientists and officials accused of leaking nuclear technology.
The Lahore High Court judges made their decision after the government showed them classified information relating to the investigation under way.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/3515167.stm
Published: 2004/02/23 20:01:26 GMT
? BBC MMIV
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>> HORSE TRADE WATCH CONTINUED...

CIA Chief, Pakistan Discussed Bin Laden
By MUNIR AHMAD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -
The head of the CIA discussed the hunt for Osama bin Laden as well as ways to fight nuclear proliferation during a visit to Pakistan this month, senior government officials said Monday.
"Both sides shared views and information," an intelligence official, familiar with the talks between CIA Director George Tenet and Pakistani intelligence officials, told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad declined to comment and the Foreign Ministry refused to confirm that Tenet had visited.
The meetings came just days after the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, acknowledged leaking nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran. News of the scope of Khan's activities has caused worldwide alarm and embarrassed this South Asian country.
Tenet discussed the implications of the nuclear black market with Pakistani intelligence officials, the official said.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan on Feb. 5, following his confession. Washington has said the pardon was an internal Pakistani decision, and that it was most concerned with shutting down Khan's network.
Tenet's visit came more than a week before Pakistan began pouring troops into its remote tribal regions in an operation to round up al-Qaida suspects. Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the region along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
Paramilitary forces in recent days have boosted security in the lawless border region, in Pakistan's ultra-conservative North West Frontier Province. But authorities insist bin Laden is not the military's immediate target.
Still, troops have stepped up patrols in the rugged area, placing heavy guns on key roads and taking positions in sandbagged bunkers in the key town of Wana in tribal South Waziristan.
"I cannot tell you about the exact timing or place of the operation, but it will start very soon," said Mohammed Azam Khan, a local government official.
Khan said that all those suspected of being "foreign terrorists" will be arrested.
"Tribal elders have given us an assurances that no foreign national is now living in their areas, but still we want to satisfy ourselves," he said. "A house-to-house search will be conducted."
The operation is the fourth of its kind since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States. It will center on suspected Taliban and al-Qaida men who authorities believe have married Pakistani women and are living in the tribal areas.
Pakistan has been a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, and Pakistani security forces have captured more than 500 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Among the captured are key figures in bin Laden's terrorist network.
Musharraf escaped two assassination attempts in December which he blamed on al-Qaida. The government has provided no evidence to support his claim.

--

>> NEXT LIFE - ATOL?

N Korea: Dr Evil's chance for redemption
By Tom Tobback
BEIJING - "North Korea has an opportunity to change its path. As some Americans might put it, there is a chance for redemption," according to James Kelly, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, speaking about the forthcoming six-party talks this week aimed at defusing the North Korean nuclear crisis.
The second round of talks opens here on Wednesday, involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. Expectations are low, but after North Korea's balking and calling the first round a waste of time, just the fact of the meeting is seen as significant. The stated positions of Washington and Pyongyang are far apart and appear inflexible, so maybe just sitting down is important.
One of the hoped-for results of this round is the formation of lower-level working groups, but these could hardly be called progress if the major parties fail to move any closer on the core issues. The US wants eradication of North Korea's nuclear-weapons programs; North Korea wants the lifting of sanctions, economic assistance, and US security guarantees that Washington won't attack.
The administration of US President George W Bush obviously sees the upcoming talks as the last way out for Pyongyang's "Dr Evil" - the nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, head of what Bush calls part of the "axis of evil", along with Iraq and Iran.
In the safe conservative company of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo in Washington, Kelly stated the US view of Korean history: "While the Republic of Korea has, in recent decades, developed into a leading member of the international community, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [DPRK] took a historic wrong turn from the very start of its existence."
Kelly referred to Bush's anti-nuclear-proliferation speech of February 11: "Abandoning the pursuit of illegal weapons can lead to better relations with the United States and other free nations. Continuing to seek those weapons will not bring security or international prestige, but only political isolation, economic hardship and other unwelcome consequences."
Pyongyang - isolated, hungry, declining
No wonder the DPRK, already politically isolated and scraping the bottom of the barrel for sustenance after years of famine and economic decline, has a clear idea of what those "unwelcome consequences" could mean. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 of November 2002 warned of "grave consequences" if Iraq would not comply with inspections to uncover weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The Bush administration keeps up the tradition of not being willing to recognize what Professor Gavan McCormack of the Australian National University calls "the core of legitimacy in Pyongyang's cry for settlement": its bitter legacy of Japanese colonialism, and the continuing nuclear intimidation, economic embargo and diplomatic isolation by the US.
The basic mechanism of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), recently highlighted again by Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was that non-nuclear countries would agree not to seek nuclear weapons in exchange for nuclear disarmament by the states possessing nuclear weapons. On February 12, ElBaradei called not only for stronger action against nuclear proliferation, but also for "accelerated efforts towards nuclear disarmament".
As much as Washington is urging Kim Jong-il to grab this "chance for redemption", Pyongyang also is demanding that a U-turn be taken by the Bush administration. Ambassador Li Gun, a member of the DPRK negotiating delegation, said: "Unless the US changes its hostile policy toward North Korea, we absolutely cannot give up nuclear weapons."
This comment illustrates that the two positions are so far apart that substantial progress at the upcoming talks is unlikely. Washington has said it wants to examine the DPRK proposal of a re-freeze of its plutonium-based facilities in Yongbyon, but admits that the US goal is nothing less than CVID - the new buzz-word of the Bush administration - Complete (read: including the alleged uranium-enrichment program), Verifiable (read: intrusive inspections after a Libya-style admission of weapons programs and "surrender"), Irreversible (read: a freeze is not enough) and Dismantlement (read: dismantlement of the DPRK nuclear programs).
A second basic principle cited by Kelly to resolve the crisis is the multilateral framework the US has been insisting on from the start, including South Korea, Japan, Russia and China in the negotiations. Not that Washington appears to seek a genuine diversity of views that might differ from its own. On Sunday Kelly arrived in Seoul to coordinate the US, South Korean and Japanese strategies for the six-way talks.
DPRK claims Chinese support for its plan
On the other side, Pyongyang claims the support of its host country, China. DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan met Chinese officials in Beijing two weeks ago and announced that China had agreed "to take joint actions to make substantial progress in the next round of the six-way talks". Pyongyang also stated that Beijing "admitted the reasonability of the package proposal of simultaneous actions for the solution of the nuclear issue and the DPRK-proposed 'reward in return for freeze'".
China reportedly has urged the US not to focus on the uranium-enrichment question, which entered the spotlight after the revelations by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, that he passed nuclear technology to North Korea in the 1990s. Kelly said, "The recent confession of Pakistan's [ Abdul Qadeer] Khan suggests that, if anything, the North Korean HEU [highly enriched uranium] program is of longer duration and more advanced than we had assessed." He added that North Korea is "aggressively pursuing an enriched-uranium nuclear arms program".
Pyongyang, in an official statement on February 10, called the US accusations "mean and groundless propaganda", arguing that the US is "setting afloat such unverifiable fiction about the DPRK's 'enriched uranium program' in order to scour the interior of the DPRK on the basis of a legitimate mandate and attack it just as what it did in Iraq". The rhetoric alone illustrates how difficult it will be to design an acceptable inspection mechanism.
Last week a South Korean official, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that the DPRK recently told a third country it was willing to consult on the issue of its alleged uranium enrichment program with the US. However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry - closer to North Korea than any other country, and host of the talks - said that it could not confirm this information.
Reacting to a suggestion by John Lewis, leader of the recent private US delegation to Pyongyang, that there could have been a mistranslation, Kelly said it was very clear to all members of his team that his DPRK counterpart, First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju, acknowledged the existence of a highly enriched uranium program back in October 2002.
The uranium issue seems to guarantee a deadlock, as neither side can afford to go back on its previous statements. Hence China's suggestion - just to leave it off the table.
South Korean official predicts 'positive' outcome
Chinese and South Korean officials, in their sensitive role of mediators, are trying to put a positive spin on the developments. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Seoul and said the talks will have "substantial content" and will hopefully result in tangible steps to defuse the crisis. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon stated that considerable progress has already been made and said he expects a "visible and positive outcome".
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun did his part by announcing that he would invite Kim Jong-il to visit Seoul after significant progress was made in the six-party talks. He did not mention that Kim Jong-il still has a standing invitation from Kim Dae-jung, Roh's predecessor, who visited Kim in Pyongyang in 2000.
Japan had bilateral contacts with the DPRK earlier this month to discuss the issue of North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s, but Pyongyang has threatened it will oppose Japan's participation in the six-party talks if it wants to put the abduction issue on the agenda. The Japanese parliament's recent decision to enable unilateral economic sanctions against the DPRK has further soured their relationship.
Analysts have argued that the Agreed Framework of 1994, which solved a similar nuclear crisis between the US and the DPRK, was never taken seriously by Washington because the US expected the DPRK to collapse soon after the sudden death of Kim Il-sung, the father of current leader, Kim Jong-il.
With a re-freeze of its plutonium-based nuclear facilities, the DPRK is seeking to return to the conditions similar to those under the Agreed Framework, which also included agreement on eventual full dismantlement. Kelly says that this time the US wants a "fundamental and permanent solution" for North Korea and that he does not expect to resolve the nuclear problem in a matter of a few weeks or even a few months.
Tom Tobback is the creator and editor of Pyongyang Square, a website dedicated to providing independent information on North Korea. He is based in Beijing.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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>> YEAH RIGHT - SHOW ME CASE?

Bin Laden between a hammer and a hard place
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - After taking a dramatic, and suspect, deviation into Iraq, the United States' "war on terror" is right back where it began, in Afghanistan, once again in hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden.
"The hunt has been intense," said US General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "There are areas where we think it is most likely he is, and they remain the same. They haven't changed in months."
"The sand in their hourglass is running out. The troops are re-energized," confirmed the US commanding officer in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General David Barno. "Their day has ended and this year will decisively sound the death knell of their movements in Afghanistan," Barno was quoted as telling journalists in Kabul about bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. "We have unfinished business in this part of the world."
This part of the world, in the latest US initiative to hunt down the al-Qaeda leader - code-named Hammer and Anvil - is the rugged, inhospitable territory on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the Pakistan side, the area includes the semi-autonomous tribal areas, particularly South and North Waziristan.
"On the one side of the border are US and NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] troops, on the other side are Pakistani troops," commented a source familiar with military developments to Asia Times Online. "This time it will be a big, long operation."
Another crucial side to the operation is an overhaul within the Pakistani army "to purge the elements allegedly sexed up with al-Qaeda and the Taliban", the source said, referring to those elements in the army and the intelligence services with sympathies for these groups.
The shakeup follows the recent arrest of several militants of Uzbek origin, as well as an Arab named Waleed bin Azmi, in a raid in the eastern district of the Pakistani port city of Karachi. About a dozen militants managed to escape, while the captured ones were handed over to agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, who found during their interrogations that the operators had been besieged near Wana, South Waziristan, but they were given an escape route, allegedly by officers of the Pakistan armed forces. The operators fled to Karachi, but were rounded up thanks to the local police's intelligence network.
The US presented these facts to Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf - not the first time such incidents have been reported, but this time with the demands that the officers be taken to task and that US officials be allowed to take part in the inquiries to understand better the nexus between Islamists and officers in the Pakistani army.
Several officers are now expected to be arrested. A similar incident occurred last year when Lieutenant-Colonel Khalid Abbassi and one Major Atta were seized, among others. Asia Times Online broke the story of these arrests (Musharraf's army breaking ranks ), causing a stir in the country.
Hammer poised
The ongoing operations on the border are expected to last for some time. The Pakistani military has begun to confront tribal leaders, threatening them with home demolitions and other punishment if they harbor al-Qaeda fighters. This is a highly sensitive matter in an area that is virtually beyond the writ of the administration in Islamabad.
"The Pakistani troops are confronting the tribal elders and making them be accountable for the behavior in their area. That's a traditional approach that has not been used till now in that particular part of Pakistan," said General Barno.
Of course, this area has been the focus of attention ever since the Taliban were driven from Afghanistan in late 2001. Its rugged territory and the close ethnic ties with the Pashtun of Afghanistan make it a natural safe haven, which it has undoubtedly become over the past two years as the Taliban, aided by al-Qaeda, have regrouped.
The starting point for the new US-led operation is Khost in Afghanistan as part of a preemptive plan to curb mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose belt of influence spreads all the way from Khost to Pakistan's North Waziristan Agency. Another belt travels from North Waziristan to the Kunar Valley in Afghanistan, where Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Hebz-i-Islami Afghanistan and de facto leader of the Afghan resistance, is directing operations.
Unlike in the past, though, when operations have focused on limited targets and been of short duration, the current offensive is all-embracing and has as its ultimate goal the destruction of the Afghan resistance (with the cherry on the top being bin Laden's capture). NATO forces have already occupied key places in Afghanistan in an attempt to block off the border and to wait for fugitives flushed out from Pakistan. The anvil is almost in place on one side of the border. Now it is up to the Pakistanis to do their bit on the other side.
And the United States is not taking any chances. US Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet visited Islamabad recently on an unofficial trip. His team stayed in a local hotel, while Tenet was accommodated at the US Embassy. He secretly met with several high-profile Pakistani officials, including his counterpart, the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence. Sources familiar with the meetings told Asia Times Online that a roadmap was sketched for the region, including a "full-scale war" if necessary to smoke out bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Pakistan's commitment in this was sought.
At a time when the United States is keen to leave Afghanistan - elections are due in June but likely to be delayed - this full-scale commitment holds the inherent danger that it might fail, and the US be drawn even deeper into the country's morass. This in turn could trigger a chain of events culminating in another terror attack on the US along the lines of that of September 11, 2001, for example on the Rockefeller Center in New York. The wheel in the "war on terror" in such an event really would have turned full circle.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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>> TEMPEST IN A STRAIT?

China-Taiwan arms race quickens
By Stephen Blank
The rising military tensions in and around Taiwan - and recent Chinese military exercises to intimidate Taiwan independence forces - have not been widely reported, but there is no doubt that the arms race is heating up on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Western military analysts see enormous and growing danger of military pressure from China, if not direct coercion, even conflict, in the strait.
Analysts do not rule out the possibility that if provoked, or if it believes it could lose Taiwan irrevocably, China would attack what it considers its renegade province in order to reunify it with the mainland.
Douglas Feith, US under secretary for defense, meeting with Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army, on February 10-11 in Beijing, urged China to reduce the nearly 500 missiles targeted at Taiwan. Taipei considers these missiles a direct threat and a provocation. On March 20 Taiwan voters will be asked in a referendum whether the island should acquire new defensive missiles systems if China refuses to redirect its missiles. On the same day they will be asked to choose a president, incumbent Chen Shui-bian having staked his career on the "defensive" anti-missile referendum.
Those Chinese missiles have been a major precipitating factor in the current crisis.
On February 12, the US Knight-Ridder News Service reported that China's arms acquisitions and development are tipping the military balance in Beijing's favor - thus heightening Pentagon concerns about an attack against Taiwan.
It also reported that Pentagon officials told Taiwan that by 2006 China might be able to deter US counterattacks and intervention and that more limited action might happen sooner. According to these reports, China is adding not only 75 short-range missiles against Taiwan each year but also an inventory of amphibious carriers and light tanks, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and a network of surveillance satellites.
The purposes of the missile deployments and the qualitative and quantitative improvements to Chinese forces deployed around Taiwan are clear. First, they are intended to deter any US intervention on behalf of Taiwan by threatening the United States with unacceptable losses in such a war. Though many analysts assume that China is not going to invade Taiwan because to do so would be immensely counterproductive, others consider such complacency to be misplaced.
China would attack if sufficiently provoked
First, many Chinese think the United States will not fight wars that involve high casualties to its forces. Therefore the issue is how many casualties China must suffer to occupy the island, not whether an invasion is a sensible policy.
Second, for China, the Taiwan issue is so bound up with the legitimacy of the government that any successful breakaway by Taiwan could lead to the downfall of the Beijing regime. This contingency, or the fear of it, could lead a Chinese government to fight, even from a position of inferiority. And there should be no illusions about China's reluctance to fight, because its military doctrine clearly talks of winning wars based on the inferior fighting the superior power. China has demonstrated that before. Therefore China would fight if sufficiently provoked.
The arms race, however, goes beyond Beijing's annual addition of 50-75 short- and medium-range missiles on its south coast opposite the "renegade" island to encompass its general qualitative and quantitative military buildup - and Taiwan's own response to acquire more advanced weapons systems.
Beyond the missiles being deployed against Taiwan, China is also qualitatively and quantitatively augmenting its capabilities to strike at Taiwan using the range of its conventional forces.
China is carrying out a major military reform by reducing the numbers of its military but simultaneously improving the quality of technology, weapons systems and training. This is taking place at a time of publicly announced increases in defense spending of about 18 percent a year. Given the well-known opacity of Chinese figures and statistics, especially with regard to defense, it is likely that this announced spending reveals only the tip of a vast and growing iceberg of military expenditure.
Because of this secrecy, which is based not only on communist habits but also on the received wisdom of Chinese military thinking, dating back to Sun Zi (Sun Tzu), it is all but impossible to gain an accurate or objective impression of China's real capabilities.
Taiwan fears China could attack in five to 10 years
While most US analysts say the Chinese military is still afflicted with multiple shortcomings and is not a major threat to the United States or to other Asian countries, Taiwanese officials clearly fear that within five to 10 years, the tide of Chinese superiority will be such that China could well attack Taiwan if Beijing decides the circumstances warrant military action.
Nor is it only Taiwan that is concerned.
China's military reforms also clearly encompass planning for contingencies in Xinjiang and Tibet to suppress separatism and dissent there and to conduct operations in Central Asia with the co-signers of the Shanghai Treaty that formed the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO). That treaty represented the first time China ever promised to come to another state's aid, except in the case of North Korea. It was the first time since 1950 that China had projected its military forces beyond its borders, in bilateral exercises with Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia and joint exercises with all the members of the SCO.
Another major issue regarding the Chinese military buildup is its linkage with Russia. At China's request, details about which Russian systems and technologies are being acquired and the extent of cooperation since 2000 have been highly classified. It is known that there were joint talks on military cooperation, strategy and preparedness training of Chinese military personnel in Russian institutions, and joint research projects on high-technology with military applications - but not much more.
The systems China purchased earlier - the Su-27 Flanker fighter, the Sovremennyi destroyer with Sunburn anti-ship missiles, the S-300 anti-aircraft missile and the Kilo-class submarines - have been described in Jane's Intelligence Review by a Chinese source as stopgap acquisitions, but one can tell from Russian sources as well that China is purchasing more technologies for production from Russia than weapons systems.
The purpose of this is to develop an indigenous capacity for producing advanced weapons. Thus it is acquiring, according to most estimates, US$2 billion worth annually from the Russian defense industry, which is still desperate to sell to someone lest it be forced to go out of business as a result of the general Russian economic plague. Russian experts are also talking about selling China even more advanced systems to keep up with its demands and remain technologically competitive.
China builds arms with Russian tech
Meanwhile China has utilized the technologies acquired from Russia to build its own indigenous weapon systems: the new 052-class air-defense destroyers now under construction, the J-10 fighter aircraft, and the Song-class submarines, two of which have been completed, with the rest under construction.
Despite China's well-known difficulties coping with advanced systems and integrating them, these programs bespeak its enormous ambitions in all fields of military development, including the nuclear arena. The fact that China now also is receiving France's enthusiastic endorsement for lifting the European Union's embargo on weapons sales - an embargo that Washington wants preserved, in another instance of Franco-American rivalry - also speaks volumes for its extensive military plans. The embargo was imposed after China's brutal suppression of peaceful pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
Taiwan, for its part, has not been inactive. It clearly has intensified cooperation with the Pentagon, which is helping the island develop its own "critical needs" in order to survive a Chinese missile barrage before US forces can get there. It has advised Taiwan to beef up its anti-submarine capabilities and to create a command structure to function in the event of missile attacks, since Taiwan's anti-missile defenses are weak or non-existent.
Since Taiwan's leadership expects China to gain qualitative superiority during this decade, it also is turning increasingly to high-tech solutions, such as improved command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, space and reconnaissance capabilities (C4ISR), increased bilateral contacts with US military forces, acquisition of Patriot anti-missile missiles, and greater access to US defensive systems.
However, it is not at all clear if this would deter China or if US forces would be able to overcome China's efforts to obtain both a local superiority in a Taiwanese theater or prevent Beijing's winning a first-strike attack against Taiwan - thus keeping any future war there short.
China is not bluffing and blustering
Within a few years, China might well be able to challenge Taiwan - beyond the holding of exercises and blustering during the current campaign for a referendum and elections. The issue of missile defenses in Asia generally and near Taiwan in particular will increase in importance.
Despite the current weight accorded the Middle East, terrorism and Iraq, the China-Taiwan situation is an urgent issue that will not go away. Moreover, it has enormous repercussions for China and all Asia, as well as for the United States' position in Asia.
China has been issuing not-so-veiled threats to Taiwan as it prepares for its elections and referendum on Chinese missiles. It would be foolishly complacent to believe that Chinese capabilities will not be more fully engaged against Taiwan if China feels that it can win safely or if it feels sufficiently provoked to do so. But if Taiwan provokes China, it will most likely do so because of its rising sense of fear and threat from the mainland - a threat that China itself has generated.
This international arms race, encouraged by Moscow and by Washington, each in pursuit of their own perceived vital interests, could soon get out of control and expand to include not only conventional weapons but also space-based systems and nuclear missiles, if not defenses against those missiles.
This arms race, focused on the Taiwan Strait in the short term, will create regional ripples, if not waves, and it is the last thing Asia needs now, in the near future, or ever.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs residing in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

>> WHERE IS INTERPOL WHEN YOU NEED IT?


Query Europeans and Turks, nuke agency told
BY LOURDES CHARLES
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia wants the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to investigate five Europeans and two Turks over their roles in the black marketeering of components for nuclear weapons.
The police, which made public its report yesterday on the investigation into allegations of a Malaysian company being involved in the manufacturing of such components, will submit its findings to the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) here which would then forward the report to the IAEA, a body under the United Nations
Inspector General of Police Datuk Seri Mohd Bakri Omar said investigations revealed that the foreigners, from Germany, Turkey, Switzerland and Britain, were allegedly involved in the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
He said the link was established after questioning Sri Lankan businessman B.S.A Tahir, who allegedly worked with a top Pakistani nuclear expert in supplying centrifuge components to Libya's uranium enrichment programme
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who was briefed last Nov 13 on the allegations, had ordered the police to investigate.
The investigations also showed that the Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn Bhd, was unaware that the equipment it was tooling could be used for such a purpose.
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>> PHOTO OF TINNER
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2004/2/21/nation/7365568&sec=nation



Loose network of seven plotters
BY LOURDES CHARLES
KUALA LUMPUR: The loose black marketeering network that planned to supply Libya with components for nuclear weapons consisted of two Swiss, two Turks, two Germans and a Briton.
Police investigations made public yesterday revealed that the network had supplied or tried to buy various components for a nuclear centrifuge for Libya's uranium enrichment programme.
Inspector-General of Police Datuk Seri Mohd Bakri Omar said the detailed probe showed that Malaysian company, SCOMI Precision Engineering Sdn Bhd (SCOPE), was only one of many firms which were duped into making parts of the various components.
He pointed out that even after awarding a contract to SCOPE, Sri Lankan businessman B.S.A. Tahir engaged a Swiss consultant to oversee the tooling of the component at the firm's plant in Shah Alam.
Tahir: Middleman involved in the trafficking
The consultant, Urs Friedrich Tinner, not only chose the machinery required but also designed the tooling process of the components which could be used for a centrifuge unit.
Mohd Bakri said Tinner was always cautious when working at the plant and took away the drawings of the component design when the contract was completed.
Just before he left the country in October, the Swiss engineer also erased all technical information which were kept in the computer that was set aside for his use by SCOPE at the Shah Alam factory.
He even removed the hard disk of the computer so that there was no trace of the technical specifications of the work done.
Tinner told the staff this was to protect trade secrets.
Mohd Bakri said that as a consultant, Tinner was responsible for the purchasing and setting up of the machines and one of the machines purchased and installed by him was the same one recommended by Griffin - a Cincinnati Hawk 150 Machining Centre.
Mohd Bakri said that 39-year-old Tinner resigned from SCOPE at about the same time a ship named BBC China was searched in Port Taranto, Italy, where five Libya-bound containers were confiscated as they allegedly contained components for certain parts of a centrifuge unit.
"Tahir and Tinner did not declare the use of the components or the true nature of the business. Moreover the components which were confiscated cannot be used as one complete unit of a centrifuge," he said, adding that SCOPE was misled into manufacturing the components after being told that the components were for the petroleum and gas industry.
Tinner's father Friedrich was also named in the report as being responsible for preparing certain centrifuge components and sourced many of the materials which were made by several companies in Europe. He is also alleged to have arranged for the materials to go to Libya via Dubai.
Tinner: Designed the tooling process of components
Another man named in the report was Peter Griffin, a British national based in Dubai.
It is learnt that Special Branch officers investigating the case were handed a document by SCOMI in the form of a brief note allegedly signed by Griffin himself dated March 10, 2001 recommending the purchase of that machine.
He said Griffin was hired by Tahir to carry out a feasibility study including recommending, among others, the type of machinery needed for the tooling job.
"However, after presenting his findings including the type of machinery needed, Tahir decided not to hire Griffin as he was said to be unsuitable for the job.
"Instead Tahir had in April 2002 hired the younger Tinner as consultant," the IGP said.
Mohd Bakri said Tahir revealed under questioning that it was the top Pakistani nuclear expert who developed the network of middlemen that not only involved Tahir but also several people and companies from Europe.
However, the IGP said it was a loose network, without a rigid hierarchy, or a head..
According to Tahir, some of the middlemen appeared to have known the nuclear expert for a long while and some of them got to know him when he was in the Netherlands.
The two Turks named in the report were Gunas Jireh and Selim Alguadis.
Jireh is alleged to have supplied aluminium casting and a dynamo to Libya while Alguadis, an engineer, is supposed to have supplied electrical cabinets and a power supplier-voltage regulator to Libya.
Another middleman, Heinz Mebus, a German engineer, is alleged to have been involved in discussions between the nuclear arms expert and Iran to supply centrifuge designs. He has since died.
The seventh man in the network is Gotthard Lerch, another German citizen residing in Switzerland who is alleged to have produced vacuum technology equipment.
Mohd Bakri said police conducted an open and transparent investigation in line with the country's policy of recognising and adopting a multi-lateral approach in conjunction with the IAEA while rejecting a unilateral approach where investigations are monopolised by only certain countries.
He said police here were willing and ready to co-operate with the IAEA.
Mohd Bakri stressed that although the individuals above were alleged to have been involved, the governments of the countries concerned and some of the companies involved were unaware of the real use of the components.

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IGP: Agency can quiz Tahir
JOHOR BARU: Sri Lankan businessman B.S.A.Tahir is still in Malaysia and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is free to question him, Inspector-General of Police Datuk Seri Mohd Bakri Omar said yesterday.
He said that police were more than willing to assist IAEA with regard to Tahir, who allegedly worked with a top Pakistani nuclear expert in supplying centrifuge components for Libya's uranium enrichment programme.
Mohd Bakri confirmed that the Dubai-based businessman, whose whereabouts had been unknown, was not under arrest.
"We are more than willing to assist IAEA (on Tahir's activities) and they can interview him if they want to," Bakri told reporters after a rugby match between the Malaysian police and its Thai counterpart for the Rujirawongse Cup yesterday.
Mohd Bakri said that police had not imposed restrictions on Tahir's movements or barred the businessman from leaving the country.
"He has not been arrested, that much I can say. Neither is he prevented from leaving the country. Where is the law to restrict (his movement)? His passport has not been impounded," he added.
Police investigations into allegations that Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn Bhd (Scope), was involved in manufacturing the component, revealed that the company was unaware the equipment it was tooling could be used for uranium enrichment.
The investigations, which were made public on Friday, showed that Scope was unaware the exported components were for a certain centrifuge unit in Libya and it had considered the deal as a business deal.
Mohd Bakri said it was up to Scope to take action against Tahir for "misleading" it in the business deal.
"As a result of police investigations, we are of the opinion that Tahir had misled the company.
"However, it is up to Scope and not us to take action from here on," he added.
To a question, Bakri said that Malaysian police were not obliged to inform the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on its findings.
"I don't see why we should inform the FBI. We are not obliged to them," he said.
In Kuala Lumpur, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the police report on the alleged production of component parts for the "nuclear black market" in Malaysia had cleared the Government of any implications.
Najib, who is also Defence Minister, said the Government had all along asserted that it did not have the know-how or the intention to make nuclear weapons
"We hope we can put the matter to rest," he told reporters after opening a dialogue on trade, biotechnology and sustainable development at Legend Hotel here yesterday.
Yesterday, Malaysian Institute for Technology Research (Mint) and Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) said in a joint statement that they would write to IAEA on Malaysia's stand concerning the issue.
This follows a request by IAEA for specific information to help the agency in investigations in countries suspected to have violated the United Nations-backed Non-Proliferation Treaty, which controls the production, use, import and export of materials used in nuclear production.
Mint and AELB said that Malaysia would voluntarily submit a full report on the case to IAEA "in due course" and hoped IAEA would use the information to probe all individuals and companies involved in the alleged "nuclear black market", irrespective of which country the parties were operating in.
The statement reiterated that Malaysia was not under investigation by IAEA.
It also said that Malaysia had not signed an additional protocol to the Safeguard Agreement listing equipment and non-nuclear materials that must be reported to IAEA.
It said that even if Malaysia had signed the protocol, there was no legal requirement for Malaysia to report the alleged centrifuge components made by Scope to IAEA as they were found to be made of materials of quality and strength below that specified in the protocol.