>> THE WOODWARD BOOK RIPPLES...

M. Powell avait mis en garde M. Bush contre une invasion de l'Irak
LE MONDE | 19.04.04 | 13h31 * MIS A JOUR LE 19.04.04 | 16h07
Un livre raconte le m?canisme de la marche ? la guerre et les conflits internes qui l'ont accompagn?e.
Washington de notre correspondant
Un nouveau livre de Bob Woodward raconte, vus de l'int?rieur de l'?quipe dirigeante am?ricaine, les ?v?nements qui ont abouti au d?clenchement de la guerre d'Irak, le 19 mars 2003. Le m?canisme de la marche ? la guerre et les conflits internes qui l'ont accompagn?e sont expos?s pour la premi?re fois de fa?on aussi compl?te, si l'on en juge par les "bonnes feuilles" que le Washington Post a commenc? ? publier, dimanche 18 avril.
Enqu?teur vedette du Washington Post depuis le scandale du Watergate, il y a trente ans, Woodward avait d?j? b?n?fici? d'un acc?s sans ?gal aux acteurs et aux documents de la Maison Blanche pour son livre pr?c?dent, Bush at War (Bush s'en va-t-en guerre, ?ditions Deno?l), qui portait sur les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 et sur leurs suites. Pour Plan of Attack("Le Plan d'attaque", ?dit? chez Simon & Schuster), il a pu interroger 75 responsables de l'administration Bush, mais seuls les propos du pr?sident lui-m?me, avec lequel il a eu trois heures et demie d'entretiens au total, sont rapport?s au style direct.
Woodward raconte que, le 21 novembre 2002, George Bush a demand? au secr?taire ? la d?fense, Donald Rumsfeld, de mettre en route la pr?paration de plans pour une op?ration en Irak. La guerre n'?tait pas termin?e, alors, en Afghanistan. Le pr?sident am?ricain a donn? consigne ? M. Rumsfeld de faire en sorte que ces pr?paratifs se fassent en secret. Il s'en explique en disant que s'ils avaient ?t? rendus publics, ces plans auraient provoqu? "une angoisse internationale et une sp?culation int?rieure ?normes".
Cinq semaines plus tard, le 28 d?cembre, quand M. Bush a re?u, dans son ranch de Crawford, le g?n?ral Tonny Franks, chef du Commandement central, l'?tat-major comp?tent pour cette partie du monde, l'entretien a port? enti?rement sur l'Irak, mais ils ont affirm? ? la presse qu'ils avaient parl? de l'Afghanistan.
Lors de sa tourn?e en Europe et en Russie, fin mai 2002, le pr?sident am?ricain a d?clar? qu'il n'avait "pas de plans sur -son- bureau" pour agir militairement contre Saddam Hussein, alors que l'?tat-major y travaillait depuis six mois. Selon Bob Woodward, ce travail de planification a cr?? une dynamique en faveur de la guerre, quand bien m?me M. Bush affirmait n'avoir rien d?cid?. Cette dynamique ?tait aliment?e par le vice-pr?sident, Richard Cheney, et par ceux qui partageaient son point de vue, c'est- ?-dire M. Rumsfeld et, plus encore, le secr?taire adjoint ? la d?fense, Paul Wolfowitz, et le sous-secr?taire charg? de la politique, Douglas Feith.
L'auteur ?crit qu'aux yeux du secr?taire d'Etat, Colin Powell, oppos? ? l'option militaire, M. Cheney faisait "une fixation malsaine" sur l'Irak. M. Powell soup?onnait le vice-pr?sident et ses partisans d'avoir constitu? un gouvernement parall?le. Il donnait au groupe d'analystes du renseignement constitu? par M. Feith le surnom de "Gestapo".
M. Powell a mis en garde M. Bush, ? plusieurs reprises, contre une invasion de l'Irak. Au cours d'un d?ner ? la Maison Blanche, le 5 ao?t 2002, avant que le pr?sident ne parte en vacances, le secr?taire d'Etat lui a dit qu'il ne devait pas se laisser entra?ner dans cette entreprise. "Vous allez ?tre le fier propri?taire de 25 millions de personnes, de leurs espoirs, de leurs aspirations et de leurs probl?mes", a-t-il pr?venu.
Le secr?taire d'Etat est revenu plusieurs fois, par la suite, sur ce que son adjoint, Richard Armitage, appelait "la r?gle de Pottery Barn", du nom d'une cha?ne de magasins de vaisselle : "Ce que vous cassez vous appartient." La tension entre M. Powell et M. Cheney ?tait telle que c'?tait ? peine s'ils se parlaient.
Woodward raconte que, le 21 d?cembre, M. Bush s'est fait pr?senter les ?l?ments dont disposait la CIA (Agence centrale de renseignement) sur les armes de destruction massive que Saddam Hussein ?tait accus? de d?tenir. Etonn? de la faiblesse de ce qui lui ?tait montr?, il a interrog? le directeur de la CIA, George Tenet, qui lui a affirm? : "Ne vous inqui?tez pas, c'est un slam dunk !" Ce terme de basket-ball d?signe un point tellement facile que le joueur qui le marque se suspend un instant au panier pour narguer l'adversaire.
C'est au tout d?but janvier 2003, selon Woodward, que le pr?sident a pris la d?cision d'employer la force, mais en essayant d'obtenir l'accord du Conseil de s?curit? de l'ONU, parce que le premier ministre britannique, Tony Blair, y jouait sa survie politique.
Le 11 janvier, M. Cheney a inform? l'ambassadeur d'Arabie saoudite ? Washington. M. Powell l'a ?t? le 13, de peur qu'il ne l'apprenne par le diplomate saoudien. "Etes-vous avec moi l?-dessus ?", lui a demand? M. Bush au cours d'une entrevue de douze minutes. "Je ferai de mon mieux. Oui, Monsieur, je vous soutiendrai", a r?pondu le secr?taire d'Etat. Ancien militaire, ancien chef d'?tat-major interarmes, M. Powell a jug? qu'il ne pouvait pas d?missionner au moment o? son pays allait partir en guerre.
Patrick Jarreau

* ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 20.04.04
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>> AHEM...

Woodward book contradicts CIA director
By Andrew Tully
WASHINGTON - Two months ago, United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet gave a public response to the growing concern about the quality of US intelligence preceding the Iraq war. His remarks came amid questions about whether the administration of President George W Bush had pressured the US intelligence community to help make the case for war, by presenting evidence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat.
But Tenet said CIA analysts never portrayed Saddam as an imminent threat to the region, the world, or the US. And he directly countered claims that Bush policymakers influenced how the CIA interpreted its own intelligence: "The question being asked about Iraq, in the starkest terms, is, 'Were we right or were we wrong?' In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong or completely right. That applies, in full, to the question of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction," Tenet said.
But that is not how Tenet is characterized in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post newspaper.
Woodward's reporting contributed to the resignation of president Richard Nixon three decades ago after the Watergate scandal. In his latest book, Plan of Attack, he writes that during a crucial meeting with Bush, Tenet twice reassured a wary president that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Woodward writes that in December 2002 - three months before the war began - Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, gave Bush what the president hoped would be a convincing case against Saddam - convincing enough to prevail in a court of law.
According to the book, McLaughlin gave a detailed presentation with charts and photographs. But when he was done, Bush said it was not convincing. The US president is quoted as saying, "I've been told all this intelligence about [Saddam] having WMD, and this is the best we've got?"
Woodward writes that Tenet described the case as foolproof, literally calling it a "slam-dunk". When Bush again expressed skepticism, Tenet reiterated his conviction that the evidence against Saddam was sound.
During three-and-a-half hours of interviews with Woodward for the book, Bush recalled that Tenet's reassurance about the quality of the intelligence was "very important" in influencing his decision to go to war.
How to explain the two apparent faces of Tenet - one brashly confident of the case for war; one wary and defensive about the CIA's intelligence?
Retired US Army General Edward Atkeson said in an interview that he found the passage from Woodward's book very troubling on several levels. Atkeson served as an intelligence officer in Europe during the Cold War and several times was temporarily transferred to the CIA.
Was the head of the CIA truly surprised by the failure to find WMD in Iraq? If so, says Atkeson, his initial confidence is unsettling. Also, Atkeson says, Woodward's account presents Tenet in a way that is almost cavalier, and not consistent with the typical intelligence-community methods:
"I wouldn't have expected him to just pristinely lay the thing on the president's desk and say, 'That's it, and if you have any questions, give me a call.' Nor would I expect him to give a kind of a 'slam-dunk' kind of a demonstration," Atkeson said.
In fact, Atkeson says he is bothered by Tenet's demeanor as it is described by Woodward. He says analysts may speak in sports slang when discussing work-related matters among themselves in unguarded moments, but no one, not even the CIA director himself, would dare to speak so casually to a president, especially a president who has a reputation for demanding proper behavior from everyone.
"That's out of character for anybody in the business, so far as a presentation of some gravitas [is concerned]. That's unprofessional. If I were the president, I'd say, 'Go back to your office and call me when you're ready to give me a professional presentation,'" Atkeson said.
Atkeson also says he finds Woodward's account troubling because of its sourcing. Although the writer claims to have spoken to 75 officials close to the case, nearly all of them are unnamed. Only material from the Bush interviews is fully attributed to the president.
Atkeson says he questions how skeptical Bush really was about the intelligence regarding Saddam's suspected weapons arsenal. He also wonders whether Karl Rove, Bush's senior political adviser, may have urged the president to portray himself as reluctant to go to war.
"[Bush] may have Rove sitting right behind him saying, 'Tell [Woodward] this, tell him that.' That would fit in with the popular view of the way [Bush's] staff works - you know, where they're always trying to minimize damage and put the best light that they can on things," Atkeson said.
Tenet says his agency currently is evaluating whether it served the country well in the way it gathered and presented intelligence to the president. He has said the evaluation will be thorough, and the American people must be patient in awaiting the verdict.
But with Woodward's book putting the CIA on the defensive, it appears a reckoning may come sooner than anybody may have thought.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.

(Copyright 2004 RFE/RL Inc.)
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>> THE VISION THING...

Lawmakers Press Administration for Detailed Iraq Plan
Wolfowitz, Myers Appear Before House Committee

By Pauline Jelinek
The Associated Press
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; 1:29 PM

Lawmakers will keep pressing the Bush administration until they get a detailed explanation of its strategy in Iraq, a senator said Wednesday, opening a second day of sometimes contentious hearings on the increasingly violent occupation.
Citing a host of questions about the planned transfer of power in Baghdad June 30, Sen. Dick Lugar said his Senate Foreign Relations Committee "will be persistent in asking these questions and others because the Americans should have the opportunity to understand the administration's plan and to carefully monitor its progress."
Later Wednesday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz appeared before another panel of lawmakers, a day after he irritated some senators with a half-hour speech on how brutal Saddam Hussein was, and how much better off Iraq was without him.
Wolfowitz's testimony Tuesday opened three days of hearings that senators hoped would shed light on the administration's strategy for the increasingly troubled campaign in Iraq -- information that Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike say the administration has consistently denied them.
"What we've been given is a series of just glossy overstatements ... and how bad Saddam Hussein is ... really, really bad," Democratic Sen. Mark Dayton of Minnesota said sarcastically some three hours into a four-hour hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We have a right to know, and we should be told, what is going on over there, in factual terms, in military terms."
On Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, Wolfowitz focused more on answering questions that have been raised, though he gave few new details.
"Some say we have no plan. We have a plan," he said referring to U.N. suggestions for forming an interim government to take over from occupation authorities. Senators want to know more -- exactly who those people will be, how they will be picked, what happens if fractious Iraqis cannot agree on their selection before the handover?
Appearing with Wolfowitz, Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee Wednesday that recent violence -- and the resulting extension of tours of duty for some 20,000 troops -- "is going to cost us more money" than budgeted.
He said defense officials are studying their budget now to determine how much. "We're in the middle of that analysis right now," he said.
Wolfowitz was attending two of five sessions planned before three separate panels this week -- military panels in the House and Senate and Lugar's foreign relations panel.
Former officials and think tank experts have made up the witness list the first two days. Lugar had strong words for the administration Tuesday when it appeared Wolfowitz was refusing to testify at the senator's hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Saying success in Iraq depends on the administration's credibility, Lugar noted that over the past year and a half the administration has "failed to communicate" its plans to Congress and the American people. But he announced Wednesday that Wolfowtiz had phoned him -- said he could not come to due to a family wedding -- and was sending another Pentagon official.
Some lawmakers have said that they not only want to hear more about the administration's plans for any problems in the transition of sovereignty back to Iraq, but they want to know what the pricetag will be for a continuing U.S. presence there.
"In this year's budget that we're voting on, for 2005, they haven't asked for one single penny for next year for Afghanistan and Iraq. Give me a break," Sen. Joseph Biden, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Wednesday on NBC"s "Today" show.
"They already know that it's going to cost a minimum of $60 billion to keep the troops there," the Delaware Democrat said.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said on the same show that lawmakers want the administration "to be honest with the Congress. Be honest with the American people. ... It's going to be $50 to $75 billion in additional money."
The administration previously has relied in large part on so-called supplemental spending bills -- emergency legislation that is apart from the regular budgeting process -- to meet war costs.
Wolfowitz told the armed services panel that Iraq has seen the beginnings of a "tremendous transformation" in the year since the invasion, with improvements in health care, schools and other services as well as work toward forming a new government.
"I'm not here to paint a rosy picture or to view this through rose-colored glasses," he said, conceding there are "enormous problems." Officials need to speed up reconstruction work as well as the training of Iraqi forces to be responsible for their own security, he said.
He also noted the violence, in which 100 American troops have been killed fighting insurgencies this month.
During the violence, many lawmakers were in their home districts for spring recess and heard rising voter concerns about the violence.
Senators on Tuesday asked how the transfer of power in Iraq could be accomplished in so little remaining time, what the Pentagon would do if more troops are needed and what it would cost financially.
They also criticized the administration, saying too few troops were sent for the job; there was a lack of planning for postwar operations; troops are being overtaxed by repeated and extended deployments; and that unilateral action has left the United States bearing the bulk of the burden with little hope of getting more international troops to help.
? 2004 The Associated Press
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Constituents' Iraq Worries Growing, Lawmakers Say

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A04
Lawmakers returning from their spring break say constituents are increasingly concerned about what they see as a lack of progress toward stability in Iraq, and want President Bush to spell out a clear strategy for victory.
They also found their constituents to be troubled by hearings on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, although many seemed more upset by outbursts of partisanship in the proceedings than by revelations of failure to prevent the attacks.
Together, people's reactions to the bloody insurgency in Iraq and the contentious hearings at home showed an American public that is growing more restive over Washington's response to its concerns -- an anxiety reflected in hearings that opened in the Senate yesterday on the outlook for Iraq.
As the Foreign Relations Committee launched the first of three hearings, both Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and ranking Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) urged the administration to be more forthcoming about its strategy for returning Iraq to the control of its people.
The Bush administration has sometimes failed in the past to "communicate its Iraq plans and cost estimates to Congress and the American people," Lugar said, and "must recognize that its domestic credibility on Iraq will have a great impact on its efforts to succeed."
Biden was more critical. U.S. forces in Iraq "may soon be confronted by an untenable situation . . . caught between hostile Iraqi populations that they were sent to liberate and an increasingly skeptical American public," Biden said. "No foreign policy can be sustained in this country without the informed consent of the American people, and there has not been an informed consent yet because we have not leveled with them."
At an Armed Services Committee hearing, Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) warned that the United States needs to be prepared for more violence as the June 30 deadline for transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government approaches. He cautioned against raising expectations too high.
Committee member Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine) said she is concerned about the strain on reservists and National Guard members, and their families, because of longer-than-expected deployments. The 94th Military Police Company, which has a detachment based in her state, has been deployed more than half of the past four years, she said.
To a large extent, these senators' views mirrored what other lawmakers heard during Congress's spring recess -- one week for the Senate, two for the House. They held hundreds of town-hall-style meetings that were often dominated by concerns over Iraq. This, in itself, was unusual because such sessions are usually devoted to domestic concerns, such as the economy and health care.
The sentiments expressed by lawmakers appeared to signal the likelihood of increased pressure from Congress for a more definitive statement of strategy from the administration, including steps for an orderly transfer of power.
At home during the recess, lawmakers found that constituents are not ready to "cut and run" from Iraq, despite uncertainty about what lies ahead. Nor do many people disagree with Bush's broad objectives for promoting democracy in the country. But they are beginning to lose patience because they do not understand where U.S. policy is headed and when U.S. troops can expect to come home, Republicans and Democrats said.
"As long as people can see a reasonable [prospect] of Iraq as a functioning democracy, they will continue to support the sacrifice. But the lack of a well-defined plan for how to get there is getting to be more of a problem," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
"People inherently want to support the commander in chief, but they also want assurance that America's purposes are being achieved and that the troops are coming home," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.).
"It's the idea of a commitment without an end or a strategy that is troubling," said Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.).
Some Democrats said they encountered a more impatient and disapproving response from their constituents.
"People would like to know there is a strategy that will bring Americans home, but the situation appears to be going in the opposite direction," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).
People express "dismay mixed with some puzzlement about how we got into this . . . varying degrees of anger and blame and widespread dismay," said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.).
Durbin said he believes Bush is being hurt politically, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) sees a "drip, drip, drip" effect that is gradually eroding support for the president. But Price said the "political fallout is not clear" and "it's not clear how much Bush is being held responsible."
Others, especially Republicans, said support for Bush remains strong -- an assessment that dovetails a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showing that the president has gained strength politically despite widespread doubts over the success of his policies on Iraq.
Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), a senior member of the House International Relations Committee, was struck by how his constituents have been "mesmerized" by Iraq. "Some are very supportive of the president, some are extremely skeptical, but they are all thoughtful," he said.
"All the talk about grittiness is not setting well with much of the public," Leach said. "People want a strategy for withdrawal, not a strategy for long-term commitments."
The latest concerns were triggered by a number of factors, including the increased violence, the desertion of some Iraqi security forces and disarray on the Iraqi Governing Council, said Rep. Thomas E. Petri (R-Wis.). "People are asking: Where are the democrats? Where is the democracy?" he said.
By contrast, lawmakers found a mixed reaction to testimony taken while they were home by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
"People seem to see it as a partisan contest," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). But Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) found people to be deeply concerned about the adequacy of U.S. intelligence.
People tend to see the government's lack of preparation as resulting from "multiple failings," Bayh said. "It's hard to assign blame to any one person," he said. "People want to focus on keeping it from happening again."
Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.

? 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Pentagon official: Iraq work to cost more than expected
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Increased violence in Iraq is pushing the cost of the war over budget, possibly by as much as $4 billion by late summer, the top U.S. military officer said Wednesday. And billions more will be needed for the rest of the year.

U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers testifies Tuesday before a Senate panel.
Richard Myers, Getty
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the recent decision to extend the stay of some 20,000 troops will cost roughly $700 million more over three months. The White House is keeping open the possibility it will seek additional funds before the end of this election year.
"When the service chiefs last talked about this, there was, I think, a $4 billion shortfall," Myers told the House Armed Services Committee. "We thought we could get through all of August. We'd have to figure out how to do September."
The war is costing an estimated $4.7 billion a month, officials said. Defense officials are studying their current budget, which runs through Sept. 30, to determine whether some money can be moved from purchase programs or other Pentagon accounts, Myers said.
Lawmakers expect to have a defense bill in place by the time the new budget year begins Oct. 1. But the version President Bush proposed had no money for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, legislators say the Pentagon could use money from that bill until extra money for the war is provided.
White House officials have already said they would propose a separate bill after this fall's elections -- costing up to $50 billion -- to pay for the two wars.
But Wednesday, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said the final decision on what was needed -- and when -- would be "based on what the commanders in the field feel is necessary." McClellan said Pentagon officials have assured the White House they have the money they need.
On a day when nearly 70 people were killed by suicide bombers in Iraq's southern city of Basra, Myers and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz testified for a second day on Capitol Hill. American troops this month have endured the worst casualties of the year-old campaign, with 100 killed.
At the hearings this week, lawmakers also have asked what the Pentagon would do if more troops are needed; Myers said the military is working up a plan for who could go. Lawmakers hoped more foreign troops might come to Iraq, but Wolfowitz said not many would while the violence continues.
Some lawmakers complained the Bush administration consistently has denied them information about Iraq over past 18 months.
Because of increased costs, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he plans to add $20 billion for the current budget year to the 2005 defense bill now being considered.
Several lawmakers complained anew that the administration's 2005 budget request for the Defense Department was sent to them with no money in it for Afghanistan or Iraq.
Administration officials have acknowledged they will need $50 billion for those wars. But the officials said they would not ask for it until after January -- and after the presidential election in November.
"The administration would be well served here to come forward now, be honest about this, because the continuity and the confidence in this policy is going to be required to sustain it," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said in a television interview. "And that means be honest with the Congress, be honest with the American people."
"They are simply trying to conceal the cost of this operation until after the election," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
Republican lawmakers planned to meet on Thursday with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in the Capitol for an update on developments in Iraq.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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U.S. sees Syria 'facilitating' insurgents


By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Syria is "facilitating" the movement of foreign fighters into Iraq and helping supply them with arms, according to U.S. military officials with access to intelligence reports.
The sources said the reporting has not been clear on whether hard-line Syrian President Bashar Assad is involved directly in ordering the aid. But they say he has much to lose if Iraq becomes a pro-U.S. democratic country.
Foreign fighters from Syria have become a major stumbling block to stabilizing Iraq and turning over sovereignty by June 30.
The bloody fighting in Fallujah, for example, is inspired, in part, by well-armed foreign jihadists who crossed the Syrian border and have committed some of the most gruesome attacks against Americans and their allies.
Officials said Syrian help includes facilitating their border crossing, arming them and allowing them to return for fresh supplies.
Asked how conclusive U.S. intelligence is on Syrian aid, one official said, "No doubt about it."
It is not clear, however, whether Damascus is actively organizing the influx. Osama bin Laden, leader of al Qaeda, has urged his followers to travel to Iraq to kill Westerners.
Publicly, the Bush administration has stopped short of accusing Mr. Assad's socialist Ba'ath Party regime of facilitating the terrorists' migration. But it has accused Syria of inaction in stopping the flow of foreigners along its 600-mile border with Iraq.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last week sent a strong message to Mr. Assad through the U.S. ambassador in Damascus.
"It urged Syria to work closely with the rest of the international community to promote a stable Iraq," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "It also made clear to Syria that it needs to control the transit of its border by terrorists and people supporting the insurgents in Iraq.
"It is a message that we have delivered to Syria in the past. What prompted it now, I think, is that it's an ongoing problem. It's something that we feel needs to be reiterated until it's taken care of, and it's not taken care of yet."
Mr. Powell said last week, "Our message to President Assad is that it is in our mutual interest to deal with this problem. It is not in Syria's interest to be seen as a base from which infiltrators can come across -- come across to kill innocent Iraqis or to kill coalition troops."
Mr. Powell faces a decision soon on whether the administration will slap economic sanctions on Syria. Congress gave the White House that power last fall in legislation that condemns Syria's support for terror organizations and its occupation of Lebanon.
For nearly 25 years, the United States has labeled Syria a state sponsor of terrorism. Syria gives help to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, a Shi'ite terror group set up and sustained by Iran, which also is accused of sending agents into southern Iraq to help radical cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr.
Officials said Syrian agents are aiding the Iraqi insurgency because it is not in Damascus' interest to have a pro-U.S. country on its border. Mr. Assad fears that a free Iraq could spur a wave of democracy in his country, jeopardizing his rigid socialist rule, officials say.
Mr. Assad also realizes that Washington is limited in how it can react. The U.S. military is overcommitted globally. It would be politically difficult for President Bush to launch military strikes, thus opening up yet another front in the war on terrorism.
"The Syrians know America can bark a lot, but what else can we do?" said one military source.
The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force last month took over control of western Iraq from the 82nd Airborne Division. The Marines promptly committed more troops to the border area and have engaged in a series of deadly firefights in the border town of al Qaim and at other points.
The United States has also sent military personnel into Syria on reconnaissance missions.
"To stop the source, the Marines did put a very intense effort, and it still continues up there," said Maj. Gen. John Sattler, chief of operations for U.S. Central Command. "We had an extreme amount of success on the front side, meaning that we did find, fix and ultimately finish a number of cells that were out there, that were facilitating this type movement."
The State Department's yearly report on global terrorism states, "Syrian and Iranian support for Hezbollah activities in the south [Lebanon], as well as training and assistance to Palestinian rejectionist groups in Lebanon, help permit terrorist elements to flourish."
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General: Much of Iraq's Forces Have Quit

By CONNIE CASS
Associated Press Writer
Bush says coalition forces have been facing a ruthless enemy in Iraq. (Audio)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- About one in every 10 members of Iraq's security forces "actually worked against" U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation, the commander of the 1st Armored Division said Wednesday.
In an interview beamed by satellite from Baghdad to news executives attending The Associated Press annual meeting, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey said the campaign in Iraq was at a critical point.
"We have to get this latest increase in violence under control," Dempsey said. "We have to take a look at the Iraqi security forces and learn why they walked."
The militia violence aggravated underlying troubles in Iraq's new military and police forces - the unfulfilled desire for "some Iraqi hierarchy in which to place their trust and confidence" and a reluctance by Iraqis to take up arms against their countrymen, Dempsey said.
"It's very difficult at times to convince them that Iraqis are killing fellow Iraqis and fellow Muslims, because it's something they shouldn't have to accept," he said. "Over time I think they will probably have to accept it."
The failure of Iraqi security forces to perform is significant because it could hurt the United States' overall exit strategy from Iraq, which is dependent on moving U.S. troops out of the cities and handing authority to Iraqis. Officials have said the U.S. military would delay its withdrawal from parts of Iraq until Iraqi forces were ready to take control.
In one example of the problems, on April 5, a newly created Iraqi army battalion of several hundred soldiers refused to join U.S. Marines in their offensive against insurgents in the city of Fallujah.
Dempsey maintained in the interview that popular support for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is still "very solid."
But he acknowledged "a form of descending consent" for the U.S. military presence occurring among Iraqis as time passes.
"There is a point where it doesn't matter how well we're doing, it won't be accepted that we have a large military presence here," he said. "We're all working very diligently trying to figure out where that point is."
Dempsey was asked about the remarks of two other U.S. commanders who questioned the wisdom of banning former Baath Party members from government jobs when their skills are needed in the reconstruction effort.
"History is going to have to decide whether that was right or not," he said.
Dempsey recalled receiving a warning from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah that the coalition forces would find it tough to bring order to Iraq after dissolving the country's only two powerful institutions - the army and the Baath Party.
"So part of me says our jobs may have been easier had we just found a way to keep some of the Baath Party in place," Dempsey said, echoing comments by Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste and Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham published in The New York Times on Wednesday.
But Dempsey added: "On the other hand, the entire part of the population that was disenfranchised during these 35 years, largely the Shiite population, absolutely has no trust in any former member of the Baath Party. So we found ourselves exactly in the middle of this."
On the security forces, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said he is sending Maj. Gen. David Petraeus back to Iraq to oversee the training and equipping of all Iraqi security forces, including those who had been the responsibility of the State Department or the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Dempsey said efforts are under way to ensure Iraqi security forces that there will be Iraqi authorities in place to back them up after U.S. troops leave.
During the recent militia attacks, "about 50 percent of the security forces that we've built over the past year stood tall and stood firm," he said.
"About 40 percent walked off the job because they were intimidated. And about 10 percent actually worked against us," said Dempsey, describing that group as infiltrators.
Dempsey commands the Army division in charge of Baghdad. He has been in Iraq for more than a year, focusing on intelligence gathering and combatting terrorism as he works to help Iraqi security forces take over those tasks.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.




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>> FOGGY BOTTOM BLUES? ASK HUMAN RESOURCES ABOUT CULTURAL SENSITIVITIES?


U.S.-Saudi Relations Show Signs of Stress
Reformers Labeled 'Agents of America'

By David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A16


JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the U.S. consul general here, waited outside a restaurant for evening prayers to end so she could enter. Suddenly, a Saudi religious policeman barred her way, pointing out that she was not wearing an abaya, the black cloak required of Saudi women in public.
She was a U.S. diplomat, she told him. He spit in his hand and rubbed it on the sole of his shoe. "This is what I think of your diplomatic status," he said, Abercrombie-Winstanley recounted in a recent interview.
Abercrombie-Winstanley, 46, an ebullient career diplomat, was undeterred. She began meeting with Saudi reformers who were impressed by stories of last year's encounter, which gave her a taste of the realities they face.
Last month, it was the Saudi government that tried to block Abercrombie-Winstanley's path, warning the reformers in Jiddah to stop meeting with her and other U.S. diplomats. On March 22, the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, delivered blunt words at a meeting of about a dozen reform leaders, according to two Saudi reformers who were there.
Disparaging the reformers as "agents of America," Nayef said: "The government is not weak and the United States will not protect you," according to one of them, who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name because he feared arrest.
Nayef's warning was one of the latest signs of friction between the two countries. The relationship has grown more tense since the Bush administration began in late 2002 to push for political, social and economic change in Saudi Arabia.
In a statement last month, Nayef confirmed that about a dozen reformers had been arrested on the eve of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's visit on March 19 in part because of their contacts with "foreigners," though he did not specifically mention Abercrombie-Winstanley or the United States. The Saudis also justified the arrests by citing the reformers' calls for a constitutional monarchy and an independent human rights commission.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the identification of 15 of the 19 hijackers as Saudis, testimony at congressional hearings has portrayed the kingdom as a center of terrorist financing and an extremist strain of Islam.
Tough new visa restrictions have also ended easy access for the thousands of Saudis who enter the United States every year. No new major U.S. military weapons deals have been announced. A plan for U.S. companies to play a major role in developing the country's energy sector has collapsed. The two governments are at odds over oil prices, Israel and the Palestinians, and Iraq, whose instability is a major concern here.
Officially, Saudi and U.S. spokesmen insist that all is well with the relationship. Both sides point to their increasingly close cooperation in the struggle against Islamic terrorists -- the CIA and FBI now provide raw intelligence to Saudi security authorities.
"The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States is not based on personalities. It's based on interests," said Adel Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler. "I don't think it's ever been as strong as it is now."
Powell, at a news conference in Riyadh last month after his meeting with the crown prince, also repeatedly described ties as "quite strong."
Yet in a rare discordant note, Powell and his counterpart, Prince Saud Faisal, publicly aired U.S.-Saudi differences over the arrests of the reformers.
"We have concerns when people who are trying to express their views and do it in an open way, and a democratic way, are unable to do so," Powell said.
Saud retorted: "These people sought dissension when the whole country was looking for unity and a clear vision, especially at a time when it is facing a terrorist threat. This is not the time to seek dissension."
A more ominous development was the failure of U.S. firms to win Saudi contracts in early March, the first time in 30 years that foreign companies were allowed back into the kingdom to explore for new gas deposits. Saudi Aramco, the largest state oil company in the world, signed deals with Russian, Chinese and European firms.
The Saudis initially intended to give Exxon Mobil Corp., the U.S. oil giant, the leading role in the deal, viewing the move as part of a larger strategy to revitalize the entire U.S.-Saudi relationship. But nearly five years of negotiations unraveled in June for reasons still being hotly debated -- the post-Sept. 11 chill, U.S. policy in the Middle East and squabbles over profit margins.
"I think this carries political implications as well as commercial implications for the United States," said Robert Ebel, energy program chairman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, based in Washington.
These implications have become clear as U.S. gasoline prices have increased. Saudi Arabia was blamed for the higher costs, and the topic quickly became an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.
No issue currently rankles the Saudi royal family more than the Bush administration's talk of promoting political reform. President Bush's latest plan, the Greater Middle East Initiative, is scheduled to be formally unveiled in June at the summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial powers in Sea Island, Ga.
"For 30 years, the U.S. worked to buttress the status quo in Saudi Arabia," Saleh Mani, a political scientist at King Saud University in Riyadh, said at a conference at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in late January. "Now it wants regime change. It's not the status quo policy it used to be."
During a visit to neighboring Yemen in late March, Prince Saud, the foreign minister, said that U.S. "ideas and proposals" amounted to "flagrant accusations against the Arab countries and people."
"These initiatives look good from outside, but they are malicious in essence . . . as if we are waiting to receive direction from abroad to look into issues concerning our citizens."
U.S. administrations have for decades worried that the Saudi royal family would not institute reforms fast enough to stay in power and fend off Islamic extremists and Arab radicals. The former U.S. ambassador to the kingdom, Robert Jordan, who left Riyadh last fall, expressed the concern that has haunted every U.S. administration since the 1960s. "They are making progress," he said in a telephone interview last month. "The question is: What is the pace going to be?"
Last October, the Saudi government announced plans to elect half of the seats on municipal councils. Since then, it has allowed the creation of a human rights commission and an association of journalists. And it is making changes in its religiously oriented school curriculum.
But it has not announced a date for the voting, and it has rebuffed reformers' demands to elect one-third of the 120-member consultative Shura Council. The Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan, recently said that the royal family wanted to "select people who are efficient, educated and cultured" for the council, and not "people without proper qualifications."
Nayef made similar comments to the reformers last month. "The country is not ready for elections because the people will either elect tribal leaders or those who can neither read nor write," according to the account of one participant.
The restaurant encounter involving Abercrombie-Winstanley never appeared in the government-controlled press but quickly became the talk of Jiddah. She might never have met Mohamed Saeed Tayeb were it not for the religious keepers of Saudi public morality, known as mutaween.
Tayeb, an Arab nationalist, has been agitating for political reforms for years, which has frequently landed him in jail.
Despite his well-known anti-Americanism, Tayeb was so appalled when he heard about the consul general's misadventure at the restaurant in Riyadh in February 2003 that he apologized to her for the mutawa's behavior.
In December, Tayeb invited Abercrombie-Winstanley to his regular Tuesday night political salon, where as many as 70 Saudi intellectuals, academics, writers and businessmen of a reformist bent gathered to quiz her.
"There are lots of questions from Saudis" about U.S. support for reform, Abercrombie-Winstanley said. "Can we be trusted? What is it we want to do? I always with great sincerity say: 'It isn't for us to say what we want to do. . . . While we intend to be as supportive as possible, we can't just tell you how to do it. It's got to be appropriate for Saudi Arabia.' "
The king's son, Abdelaziz bin Fahd, showed up half an hour after she had left to defend the kingdom's record on reform. Abercrombie-Winstanley later heard that he said it was "inappropriate" for an American diplomat to attend Tayeb's political meetings.
On March 16, three days before Powell's visit, Tayeb was arrested and held for two weeks.

? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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>> YOU DON'T SAY?


U.S. Goals for Middle East Falter
Peace Plan, Arab Reforms Prove Elusive

By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A16
A year ago, the Bush administration had a grand strategy for the Middle East, betting real progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and removal of Iraq's Saddam Hussein would allow the United States to launch a bold initiative for democratic reform across the region.
Today, Washington faces growing Arab backlash for endorsing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan for Gaza and the West Bank, symbolized by the abrupt cancellation by Jordan's King Abdullah of a meeting with President Bush today. The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is still searching for a formula to create a government to assume sovereignty on June 30, with other countries also reviewing their troop commitments. And prospects for the democracy initiative to get support from an Arab League summit are rapidly dimming, with fears that Arab resolutions may instead criticize Washington, U.S. officials say.
In all three areas, Washington is looking for direction, bailouts or leadership from others -- the United Nations, Iraqis, Israelis, Arabs and Europeans -- to generate movement that U.S. officials have been unable to achieve since the hopes were unleashed last spring.
"Our interests in the Middle East are more vital, more complex and larger than ever before, but our political capital has never been lower," said Walter Russell Mead, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow just back from the region.
Bitterness in the 22-nation Arab bloc has deepened particularly over the past month, Arab leaders warn, with Iraq deteriorating and Sharon's visit followed by Israel's "targeted killing" of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
"After what has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it," said President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, a stalwart U.S. ally, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde published yesterday. "There exists today a hatred never equaled in the region."
"What's more -- they see Sharon act as he wants, without the Americans saying anything," Mubarak added.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell insisted yesterday that U.S. commitments on Iraq, a Palestinian state and democracy in the Middle East are unwavering -- and will eventually produce results.
"People will see over time that the United States is committed to the welfare, benefit and the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the Arab nations, and especially the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the Palestinian people," Powell told reporters in an appearance with Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher.
"I hope, as people understand that and see progress in all of these areas, the difficulties we're having with Arab opinion toward the United States will change," Powell added.
In a bid to shore up allied support on Iraq, Powell said yesterday that he had talked to the foreign ministers or leaders of almost every country in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq within the previous 24 hours. "I'm getting solid support for our efforts, commitments to remain and finish the job that they came to do," he told reporters after a meeting with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
At the same time, the Bush administration is relying on the United Nations to complete a new plan to create a provisional Iraqi government next month, after two of its own proposals were rejected by Iraqis. Washington hopes U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will return to Baghdad around May 1 to begin a final round of negotiations that will result in the appointment of a new president, prime minister and two vice presidents by mid-May, U.S. officials say.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage is today wrapping up a tour of Gulf states to win support for the U.N. plan and seek Arab help to win over Iraq's Sunni Muslims, the main political holdouts and security challenge.
On the Israeli-Palestinian front, U.S. officials appeared to be rolling back from Bush's agreement last week that Israel could keep some West Bank settlements and that Palestinian refugees from 1948 should not expect to return to Israel.
Powell told reporters yesterday that Bush's position on the Middle East peace process "is unchanged," and that he "is committed to the proposition that all final settlement issues have to be resolved between the two parties."
But the reality, foreign policy experts and diplomats say, is that the administration has largely subcontracted its Arab-Palestinian policy to Sharon to break the deadlock on the "road map" for peace launched at two major summits attended by Bush in June.
"A year ago, you had the Sharm el-Sheik and Aqaba summits and a new Palestinian prime minister, and frankly a lot of hope existed at the time," said Nabil Fahmi, Egypt's ambassador to the United States. "But in terms of the peace process, we've moved backwards."
On the Greater Middle East Democracy Initiative, the Bush administration still plans on rolling out an ambitious plan for political and economic liberalization at three summits with European and NATO allies in June -- and making the Arab world part of the dialogue, U.S. officials say. "We are anxious to work with the Arab nations on their ideas for reform within the region," Powell told reporters after his meeting with Muasher.
But the United States is counting on approval from European allies to get that initiative off the ground because suspicion of U.S. motives is so deep among Arabs. They recently postponed the annual Arab League summit in part because of a split over two resolutions -- one endorsing regional reform and the other renewing a peace overture to Israel.
The summit is tentatively rescheduled for late May, which U.S. officials admit may be too late -- and dangerous in light of recent events.
"The big question is what will come out of it. We are hoping they will focus on issues important to us in a positive way, but there are also a lot of negatives that could come out of it," said a State Department official involved in Middle East policy.
On all three key planks of U.S. policy, momentum that was sparked by bold U.S. initiatives is now running against the United States, said Geoffrey Kemp, a Reagan administration National Security Council staffer and now a Nixon Center fellow.
"Whether you're talking about the situation in Iraq or the unilateral agreement with Sharon or the wildly mishandled democracy initiative, it's very hard to pick up a head of steam once you lose credibility in your overall stated goals," he said.
To regroup, Kemp added, the administration will need to "go back to the drawing board" on the tactics of stabilizing Iraq, promoting the logic of democracy in the region and promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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>> IRAN WATCH CONTINUED


Bush Would Not Tolerate Iranian Nuclear Weapon
Washington, 21 April 2004 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. President George W. Bush says the development of a nuclear weapon in Iran would be "intolerable."
Bush told American newspaper executives in Washington today that any effort by Tehran just trying to produce a nuclear weapon would be dealt with, first by the United Nations.
"One of my jobs is to make sure they [the International Atomic Energy Agency and European leaders] speak as plainly as possible to the Iranians and make it absolutely clear that the development of a nuclear weapon in Iran is intolerable and a program is intolerable; otherwise, they will be dealt with, starting through the United Nations," he said.
The president said Iran's stated objective is the destruction of the state of Israel. Iran has denied charges that it is trying to develop nuclear weapons, saying its atomic program is for peaceful purposes.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said today that instability in Iraq is a threat to Iran's security.
Kharrazi also said Iran wants to help make the upcoming transfer of power in neighboring Iraq succeed. He is to have talks later today with UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who favors dissolving the U.S.-backed Governing Council and setting up a caretaker government.
Kharrazi made the remarks after talks with French President Jacques Chirac. Brahimi is in Europe this week to outline his proposal for transferring power in Iraq on 30 June from U.S. occupation authorities to a caretaker Iraqi government. Chirac will meet with Brahimi on Saturday in Paris.

IRAN'S CABINET RESHUFFLE AIMED AT COHESION
Iranian government spokesman Abdullah Ramezanzadeh said on 20 April that the "principal aim of the cabinet reshuffle is to give it cohesion and create greater coordination in the government's economic team," IRNA reported the same day (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 19 April 2004). "The government is considering these changes to attain its economic aims in the remaining year and a half of activity." The Economic Affairs and Finance Ministry, he said, has faced problems over "the provision of basic laws on how to collect revenues and allocate resources," whence the nomination of a new candidate, Safdar Husseini, currently labor and social affairs minister. Ramezanzadeh described Husseini as "educated in economics" and with "a successful record of executive experience" in various state bodies. The head of the Management and Planning Organization will not change, he said. "The cabinet reshuffle may be considered as over." Parliament must approve the president's nominees. VS

IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER VISITS BELGIUM, FRANCE
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi met with his Belgian counterpart Louis Michel on 20 April and called on Europe to recognize Iran's right to develop nuclear power, iribnews.ir reported the same day. "Iran has had a sincere and fully transparent cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] and Europe, and expects the opposite parties to recognize and respect Iran's rights." The agency cited Michel as saying that Brussels "will cooperate with Iran at the next session of the [IAEA] board of governors." Iran has promised to allow UN inspectors to check its nuclear activities, which the United States and Israel fear might be used to make nuclear bombs. Iran insists its program is peaceful. Kharrazi was expected to visit France on 21 April for talks with the French president and foreign minister, mehrnews.com reported, citing AFP. The agency cited a French official as saying that "Paris will this week ask Tehran to increase its cooperation with the IAEA. That is the best response to America's growing criticisms." VS

IRANIAN PARLIAMENT SPEAKER OPPOSES U.S. PLANS FOR REGION
Parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karrubi on 20 April expressed Iran's opposition to stated U.S. plans to democratize the Middle East and said it must leave Iraq, IRNA reported. The "current American government" has shown its hostility to the Islamic world, he said, adding that "any of its plans are against the interests of regional peoples and governments, and we have explicitly declared our opposition to these plans." Karrubi warned U.S. forces not to enter the "sensitive, important, and sacred" Iraqi city of Al-Najaf in pursuit of Shi'a insurgents. "The occupiers have been warned to be careful lest there is a crisis in this and other holy cities in Iraq. Any unfortunate consequences of [entering the cities] will concern the American occupiers, who have complicated matters with their aggression." Karrubi is currently visiting Syria, a strategic ally since the 1979 revolution in Iran. He repeated Iran's backing for Palestinians fighting Israel. "Tehran's clear and transparent policy is the formation of an independent Palestinian state and the return of refugees to their real homeland." VS


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Moseley: Warplanes perform sharpshooter roles

By John Solomon
Associated Press
U.S. warplanes are running about 150 flights a day inside Iraq to conduct combat operations, provide air support to ground troops and gather intelligence to help crush pockets of resistance by extremists, a top Air Force general says.
Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the vice chief of staff for the Air Force, cited the nontraditional, post-combat flights as one example of how the military has adapted its tactics in the Iraq and Afghan wars to create a flexibility that will be key for future conflicts.
For instance, the Pentagon has experimented with unmanned airplanes armed with conventional weapons previously reserved for piloted aircraft, such as traditional bombs or air-to-air missiles capable of shooting down enemy planes, he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
With little public attention, Air Force planes also have been used in anti-terror operations from the Horn of Africa to Yemen since the Sept. 11 attacks, the four-star general said Tuesday.
"It is not like classic conduct of warfare," Moseley said. "It's a lot like a sharpshooter sitting on a piece of high ground ... and picking off people or a group of people singularly."
Moseley said groundwork for the new military tactics began to take shape during the mid-1990s combat in the Balkans and came to fruition as the Pentagon mapped plans to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
He said the key to success is vastly improved coordination and communications between Marines, soldiers and special operations trops on the ground and the Navy and Air Force's warplanes, which can be called in for precise strikes within seconds if a valuable target -- such as fleeing terrorists or enemy commanders -- is identified.
Many times, he said, special operations soldiers on the ground "acted as sensors for us" to detect high-value targets in remote Afghan and Iraqi areas and called in precision strikes.
"A perfect example is our airmen with the special ops on horseback with a laptop and satellite connectivity to the CAOC (Command Air and Operations Center) so that you close in in real time at the speed of the light," he said.
Last week alone, Air Force planes flew more than 750 sorties as Iraqi rebels stepped up resistance during a month in which they have killed more than 100 soldiers and threw in doubt the planned transition of power from the United States to Iraqis this June.
Moseley said that during recent intense fighting between Marines and Iraqi rebels in Fallujah, Air Force F-16s and F-15s and Navy F-14 fighters interchangeably delivered strikes.
"Who would have thought three or four years ago that we would be at this level of jointness, where the battlefield airman is hooked with the land element on the ground and no one even knows the difference between whether it is Navy, Marine or Air Force airplanes that are delivering the effect," he said.
However, Moseley said, the evolving strategy was not without growing pains, citing Operation Anaconda in March 2002, when U.S. forces lost several soldiers and a helicopter during attacks on al-Qaida hideouts in the Shah-i-Kot mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
"We learned some interesting lessons there about orchestration and inclusion in planning that reinforce the notion that it is always better to be inclusive in your planning, and it is always better to have a full joint multidimensional plan," he said.
Moseley also said:

* Two-thousand-pound precision-guided bombs used in Iraq proved accurate enough to hit targets within the range of their 12-foot length.

* The Air Force has tested dropping 80 smaller 500-pound guided bombs in a single pass, with each bomb hitting within 4 feet of its intended target.

* At least 75 percent of current Air Force personnel are now combat-experienced, the highest level since World War II.

Moseley predicted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- which before 2001 were used only for intelligence gathering -- will play an increasing role in warfare, allowing military commanders to put flights up for periods of time beyond human endurance and to conduct surveillance with the ability to fire missiles.
CIA and military officials have confirmed they have used an armed Predator to fire air-to-ground missiles and kill al-Qaida figures.
Moseley said the Air Force retrofitted one of its Predators to fire an air-to-air missile that could be used against enemy aircraft, and that it fired once at an Iraqi aircraft shortly before the war last year, startling the enemy pilot.
Moseley said the Pentagon is also retrofitting and testing the next generation of an unmanned aircraft known as the X-45 UCAV to carry small, conventional bombs.
"I love UAVs," he said. "It is the equivalent of a low-altitude satellite. It just parks itself out there except that you can task it in a different way than a satellite."
He cautioned, however, that unmanned aircraft probably won't save the Pentagon from having to send humans into dangerous combat.
"There is the human limit. If you want to keep it up there for 30, 40 or 50 hours, then take the human out of it. The other reason you might want to be uninhabited is that you think the threat is such that you don't want to lose the pilot," he said. "That one I'm not as convinced because we have never found a threat array that we couldn't penetrate."

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Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Marines in Afghanistan welcome arrival of big guns

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The big guns have arrived.
The Marines looked like expectant fathers as they watched an M198 155 mm howitzer roll off the ramp of a KC-130 Hercules aircraft and onto a dusty runway here.
"It's like delivering a baby," said a Marine walking by, clutching an instant camera to commemorate an event that perhaps only Marines would find so special.
The arrival of the howitzers, their huge barrels slathered in grease to stave off rust from the salty sea air, symbolized the Marines' entry into this warring country. More than 400 miles inland from their ships, the leathernecks of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit are glad to have the big guns ashore.
Officials here say the 155s are the biggest guns in the Afghan theater, an obvious point of pride to these Marines, who arrived nearly three weeks ago. The artillerymen, and even some of the infantrymen, are quick to mention that they are the stewards of the fiercest indirect firepower this side of the Hindu Kush mountain range.
The two guns delivered here from the ships of the Wasp Expeditionary Strike Group, sailing in the northern Indian Ocean, will be deployed to the MEU's forward operating base near Kandahar. With a range of more than 18 miles, the guns will provide long-range security for the base and for grunts humping through the steep hills and remote villages that pepper their new domain.
Most of the artillerymen with Golf Battery, 2nd Battalion, 10th Marines, have been split into provisional rifle platoons, since most of their guns are still aboard ship. A 14-man team will man the guns at the base, while the rest of the battery will provide security for vehicle convoys during the MEU's three-month deployment here. The stint in Afghanistan comes during the 22nd MEU's regularly scheduled six-month deployment from Camp Lejeune, N.C.
As the artillerymen struggled to lift the howitzer's muzzle break and thread it onto the end of the barrel, Gunnery Sgt. William Frye of Richmond, Va., explained that as soon as they get to the forward base, his men are going to send some rounds down range.
"That way we can, you know, let everyone up there know we're here," the battery gunny said with a grin.
Clearly, subtle diplomacy isn't an artillery Marine's strong suit.
Christian Lowe is covering U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

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>> AHEM 2...

Iraq's doomed disarmament deal
By Ron Synovitz

Even as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that the chances for a political settlement of the armed standoff in the Iraqi city of Fallujah were "remote" because insurgency leaders probably won't surrender, fresh clashes erupted there on Wednesday.
And in Basra in the south, suicide bombers killed at least 60 people and wounded hundreds, many of them children, in coordinated attacks on four police stations. Near-simultaneous explosions rocked three police stations in Basra and one in the town of Zubair, 25 kilometers south of the mainly Shi'ite city, the British military confirmed.
In the Sunni city of Fallujah, residents said that Marines and guerrillas traded mortar, machinegun and rocket-propelled grenade fire in clashes that broke out early Wednesday morning and were still raging in the city's Golan district hours later.
US and Iraqi representatives had agreed on a preliminary plan for a full ceasefire in the embattled town. After three days of indirect talks, US military officials agreed that they would call off offensive operations at the town provided that local leaders could persuade insurgents to hand over their heavy weapons to Iraqi police.
The accord tasks a seven-man leadership council in Fallujah with convincing the fighters in the town to participate. The chief spokesman in Iraq for the US-led coalition, Dan Senor, described the disarmament obligations of the fighters in Fallujah.
"The parties agreed to call on citizens and groups to immediately turn in all illegal weapons. Illegal weapons are defined as mortars, [RPGs - rocket propelled grenade launchers], machine-guns, sniper rifles, [improvised explosive device-]making materials, grenades, and surface-to-air missiles and all associated ammunition. Those who give up their weapons voluntarily will not be prosecuted for weapons violations," Senor said.
In return, Senor said, up to 50 Iraqi families will be allowed to return to Fallujah each day. Also, sick or injured Iraqis will have a chance to receive treatment at hospitals in Fallujah. But Senor stressed that any delays on disarmament by the insurgents will cause the deal to collapse. "We've been very clear that time is running out. There is only so much longer we can continue this process before we have to re-engage and reinitiate operations," Senor said.
Senor says that the coalition also wants to see Iraqi investigations launched as soon as possible into criminal acts committed in Fallujah in recent weeks - including the killing and mutilation of four US contractors on March 31 and an attack on an Iraqi police station in February.
The deputy commander of coalition military operations in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, also has warned that US Marines will resume military operations if the insurgents fail to meet the disarmament obligations of the agreement.
However, as with a series of earlier, unofficial ceasefires announced in the Sunni stronghold since the US launched a major assault there two weeks ago, some fighters continued to attack US positions.
Reports say some of the thousands of civilians who fled fighting in Fallujah earlier this month were starting to trickle back. But although a few displaced civilians were allowed to walk back to the town, Marine checkpoints were still turning away vehicles.
More than 600 Iraqis - including many women, children and elderly people - have been reported killed in the fighting. But the US military says it is impossible to verify the figure.
Nearly 100 US soldiers have died in combat in Iraq since the start of April.
Meanwhile, Iraqi police who are to collect weaponry in Fallujah have confirmed that they are preparing to re-enter the town. At a US military base near Fallujah, a Reuters correspondent spoke to an unnamed Iraqi police commander who was training his officers for the mission:
"The police are going to enter the city [of Fallujah] and efforts are under way to facilitate the return of families. I think that two families have already been allowed into the city. Negotiations are going on to facilitate the return of families and there are no problems," the police commander said.
Some experts are questioning whether the fighters in Fallujah will be willing to surrender their weapons. Ian Kemp, the editor of the London-based publication Jane's Defense Weekly, told RFE/RL that the disarmament effort is unlikely to succeed.
"It seems highly unlikely that the militant groups are actually going to turn over their weapons. There's been no incentive for the militant groups to actually come forward and disarm. So it seems the repeated threat of military action is not going to compel these groups to disarm," Kemp said.
Even if some fighters participate, Kemp says it will be difficult for the US-led coalition to confirm how many weapons remain. "One of the difficulties for the coalition is [that] they have no idea how extensive the holding of weapons are. During the Saddam [Hussein] regime, small arms in particular - and that includes such things as rocket-propelled grenades - were very widely distributed," Kemp said. "And, of course, it is these rocket-propelled grenades [and] artillery ammunition being used to create improvised explosive devices that really concern the coalition. So long as that weaponry is widely distributed or hidden, it is always going to pose a risk to the security forces [whether they are Americans or Iraqi police.]"
Kemp said that any kind of local ceasefire deal in Iraq would seem to be at odds with the overall US strategy of "defeating and disarming" militants. But he acknowledged that the Fallujah deal would be in line with that strategy as long as fighters actually handed in their weapons.
Kemp also says intelligence sources suggest most of the anti-coalition fighters are former members of Saddam's military rather than foreign terrorists.
"It is worth noting that the intelligence services of some of the coalition forces believe there are foreign fighters there, but that the hard core of the opposition is actually composed of former Iraqi service personnel who have received their training from the Iraqi army. They might have been in other elements of the security forces at the time that Saddam was overthrown. But really, these former Iraqi security service personnel actually constitute the hard core of the resistance movement. And the sort of weapons that they are using, the sort of tactics they are using, would be consistent with that sort of military training," Kemp said.
Hachem Hassani, a Sunni Muslim politician who represented the Iraqi Governing Council in the Fallujah negotiations, says he agrees with Kemp's assessment. Hassani, who has traveled to the town every day during the past week, says most of the people attacking US Marine positions are residents of Fallujah, rather than foreign fighters. Thus, Hassani concludes, it is possible that local officials could have enough influence to calm the situation.
Ron Synovitz covers Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as well as economic transition and human rights issues.
Copyright (c) 2004, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036


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>> AHEM 3...

SPEAKING FREELY
9-11: The big question remains unasked
By Jack A Smith
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.
The 9-11 Commission hearings in Washington these last weeks, for all the sound, fury, and front-page headlines, seem to have been constructed to produce a foreordained and narrow conclusion about only one aspect of the events of September 11 - the government's lack of preparedness to detect the attack plan before it was executed.
Entirely omitted from the probe, and from the presidential elections as well, is the other big question about September 11 - what was the real reason the attacks took place?
The omission is hardly unintentional. The commission members, evenly balanced between highly powerful Democrats and Republicans, may take partisan shots at each other during the hearings, but they are entirely agreed on leaving this crucial question unasked and unanswered.
The hearings have produced some fruitful movements, such as testimony from retired anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, based on his new book, Against All Enemies that the Bush administration was monomaniacal about invading Iraq from the day it took office. This wasn't new, but it provided important inside substantiation. Another interesting disclosure was the text of a memo to President George W Bush a month before September 11 informing him that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization was planning an attack in the US with hijacked airplanes, but this actually proves nothing.
In all probability, the hearings will conclude that the reason for the September 11 hijacking attacks in Washington and New York City by 19 members of the fundamentalist fringe of Islam was "intelligence failure" by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Reforms will ensue, civil liberties will be further abridged in the name of homeland security, and hundreds of billions of dollars more will be invested in a long "war on terrorism" ostensibly against a few underground organizations that may have a total of 1,000 committed members.
Why is the question about the reasons for the attack not asked or answered? So far, the conventional political wisdom from Washington seems to be that the cause of September 11 is that, to paraphrase, "the terrorists are uncivilized and are motivated by a hatred for democracy and an envy of the American way of life". Such nonsense conveys the inescapable suggestion that the bipartisan Democratic-Republican political power structure ruling America would prefer not to probe too deeply into this question lest it be found complicit in creating a profound and not illogical antipathy to the United States on the part of most people in the Middle East and the world.
In our view, there are four reasons in combination why a small group of fanatics were willing to commit suicide to destroy the three symbols of US power in the world - the World Trade Center (financial power), the Pentagon (military power), and the White House, which evidently was spared because the final hijacked aircraft crashed before reaching its target (political power).
The primary reason for September 11 is the product of US policy and actions in the Middle East since the end of World War II - a policy based on exercising control over the world's greatest known reserves of petroleum. This has led Washington to continuously intervene in the region to support backward feudal monarchies and repressive, undemocratic regimes at the expense of social and political progress. The three secondary reasons involve the Afghan civil war (1978-1995), the first US-Iraq war (1990-2003), and one-sided US support for Israel (mainly 1967-2004).
Until the implosion of the USSR in 1990, the US was in a frenzy to prevent the Soviets from gaining influence in the region. Since 1990, Washington has sought to secure total hegemony throughout the entire Middle East, culminating in the Bush administration's plan to "re-make" the principal countries of the region into "democracies" subordinate to White House domination, by force if necessary, beginning with Iraq.
In some cases throughout these years the White House made deals with conservative religious regimes, such as with the royal family in Saudi Arabia soon after World War II. At the time Washington extended its military and political protection to the House of Saud in Riyadh in return for guaranteed access to oil and for support in keeping the USSR out of the region. The deal, which insures the suppression of democratic elements in Saudi Arabia, remains in place to this day.
In other instances, the White House ordered the CIA to overthrow democratically elected progressive governments, such as happened in Iran in 1953 when left-leaning president Muhammad Mossadegh was dispatched. The result was a quarter-century of repressive rule by the Shah of Iran, a US puppet finally overthrown by Shi'ite fundamentalists, who established another backward religious regime. The reason that only the religious faction was in a position to seize power was that Iran's sizable secular left and democratic forces had been killed, imprisoned or exiled by the Shah, with US approval.
The CIA repeatedly intervened in Iraq from 1958, when progressive General Abdul Karim Kassem overthrew the British-installed monarchy, until 1963 when he was overthrown with US help. Many thousands of leftists and communists were killed along with Kassem. This ultimately led to rule by the secular and at the time pan-Arab Ba'ath regime. In 1979, General Saddam Hussein gained control of the Ba'athist government, purged and killed any remaining leftists, and within a year launched an unjust war against Iran that was supported by the US until ending in a stalemate in 1988.
Over 50 years of constant American intervention - whether in Iran or Iraq, Egypt or Jordan, Lebanon or Syria, Saudi Arabia or Yemen, Oman or Kuwait, or across the Red Sea in Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia - have led to a plethora of ill fortune in the region. This includes the existence of weak, reactionary regimes dependent on the US; governments in thrall to religious factions; poverty amid great wealth; the violent destruction of left and progressive forces; the stultification of social progress; the rise of extreme religious fundamentalism as a means of establishing social and political power (particularly since the secular left has been repressed in so many of these countries); Arab disunity; and a deep sense of frustration and anger against the outside forces who have created most of these conditions, whether it be old style British and French colonialism or, since 1945, US imperialism.

Three more ingredients must be added to this witch's brew to concoct September 11:

1. The Afghan civil war (1978-1995): It was during this period that extremist Islamic fundamentalism became a serious military force, in large part because the US invested billions of dollars in training and equipping such a force, as well as providing bases and financing for fundamentalist religious schools in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden played an important role in the CIA's schemes for several years.

Washington was responding to a military coup in April 1978, principally led by left forces including progressive military officers determined to enact major social and political reforms to bring Afghanistan into the 20th century. The ruling People's Democratic Party began to introduce extensive reforms and to establish close relations with the neighboring Soviet Union. This was unacceptable to Washington.
Afghanistan's warlords and fundamentalist religious forces had immediately opposed the reforms for fear they would upset traditional power relations, and also because they guaranteed the equality of women. The reformers were in Kabul only a few months before president Jimmy Carter ordered the CIA to support the opposition forces, largely based in the vast countryside. When it was apparent a few months later that US-backed right-wing forces might overthrow the left government, the USSR sent thousands of troops to defend the progressive forces, withdrawing them in 1988.
The left government continued in power until it was crushed in 1992, followed by a horrendous three-year civil war between rival reactionary factions that was finally won by the Taliban in 1996, which was deeply indebted to bin Laden and the mujahideen "freedom fighters" responsive to his extreme fundamentalist leadership.
In 1998, Carter's national security adviser during the war, Zbigniew Brzezinski, finally acknowledged Washington's role and bragged that the US virtually induced the USSR to send soldiers to Afghanistan in order that it stumble into its own "Vietnam". He brushed aside any concern about the Taliban or their powerful mujahideen allies.

2. The first US-Iraq war (1990-2003): Iraq invaded the tiny, oil-rich principality in neighboring Kuwait in August 1990, presumably under the naive impression the US would not intervene, perhaps as a reward for exhausting Iran in a long war. Rejecting repeated Iraqi offers of a negotiated withdrawal, the regime of George Bush the First gradually built up a huge invasion force and massively retaliated in January 1990. Iraq's entire civilian infrastructure was destroyed - electricity, water supplies, factories, transportation, communications, bridges and so forth, along with its retreating army and many thousands of civilians. Extensive sanctions, which killed over a million people, along with frequent air attacks, continued until 2003, when George Bush the Second launched a new invasion.
In the eyes of Arabs and Muslims around the world, including those critical of Saddam, the first US war had turned into a nightmare of genocide, poverty and humiliation for the Iraqi people, further eroding Washington's credibility and enlarging on strong anti-American sentiments that had been building during previous decades of intervention in Middle Eastern affairs.
In addition, bin Laden, the leader of the mujahideen movement that emerged from Afghanistan, was outraged by the government of his native Saudi Arabia, which had allowed the "infidel" Americans to establish a military base on Arab/Muslim soil to attack another Arab/Muslim country. At around this time he dedicated himself to two goals: pushing the US out of the region and getting rid of the House of Saud.

3. One-sided US support for Israel (1967-2004): The US has been devoted to Israel as a surrogate for American military power in the region since the June 1967 war, though it has supported the Zionist state since its inception in 1948.

As far as the Arab world is concerned, these last 37 years that Israel has occupied much of the territory mandated to the Palestinians have been a period of great tragedy. Arabs view the Palestinians as refugees in their own country, oppressed by a violent colonial state supported by the US. Many Arabs have also expressed the conviction, shared by a number of progressives in the US, that the Bush administration's attack on Iraq - based on a plan emanating from the neo-conservative branch of right-wing reaction - was in part motivated by a desire to destroy Israel's principal opponents in the region, with Syria and Iran as potential targets as well.
Every time Washington vetoes a UN Security Council resolution seeking justice for the Palestinians, Arab anger mounts against the US. Every time Israeli tanks and soldiers fire at stone-throwing boys, the anger mounts further. Middle Eastern public opinion does not expect Washington to turn on Israel and embrace the Palestinian cause, but it cannot countenance America's total support for Israel at the expense of simple justice for millions of Arabs.
The latest example of Washington's indifference to the dreadful plight of the Palestinians is Bush's April 14 declaration of support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's devious scheme to dismantle some unwanted Jewish settlements in Gaza for the right to permanently keep large settlements in the West Bank. In addition, Bush agreed that Palestinian refugees did not possess a "right to return" to their homes in what is now Israel. Both issues had been important Palestinian bargaining points with Israel, now swept off the negotiating table by the long arm of the White House.
These four examples of Washington's imperial deportment in the Middle East for a period of more than half a century have created great antagonism toward America on the part of the Arab masses. In the process, White House policies have unintentionally generated a small, extreme fringe of Islamic fundamentalism dedicated to visiting violent retribution on the US, which it accomplished on September 11, 2001.
The Bush administration's subsequent "war on terrorism" is wrong on two main counts: 1. It is much more intended to extend US hegemony than to track down the relatively few people involved in September 11 and al-Qaeda. Elsewise, why attack Iraq - which was innocent of complicity in the incident and with the target organization - or threaten similarly uninvolved Cuba, Iran and Syria, among others? 2. It is focused on symptoms, not causes, and thus cannot succeed in its stated objectives regardless of how many more billions of dollars are spent on homeland security and foreign wars.
What then will make mighty America - the most powerful military state in world history - more secure from the threat of another terrorist attack from a small fringe group? Treat the cause, not the symptoms. Change the outrageous imperial policies and actions that have created this situation. Here's how, for starters:
Deal with the people of the Middle East and the basis of equality and respect. Stop interfering in the politics and economy of the region. Discontinue the practice of supporting reactionary regimes and destroying progressive and leftist movements and governments. Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the "war on terrorism", invest that money in repairing the damage caused by over 50 years of intervention, oppression and exploitation in the region. Get out of Iraq now and permit these beleaguered people to resolve their own problems. Stop military interventions and close down the Pentagon's many military bases in the region. Adopt a balanced stance vis-a-vis the Palestine-Israel question, starting with the demand - backed by the threat of withdrawing Washington's annual subsidy, if necessary - that Sharon withdraw all troops and settlements from the occupied territories.
Of course, those who rule America have no intention of doing anything of the kind. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are dedicated to continuing the policies that have allowed the US to exercise economic, political and military hegemony over the region and in the world. Yes, a derivative of these policies has resulted in September 11, but despite the official hand-wringing about terrorism, it is apparently well worth the inconvenience in order to extend US domination over the Middle East and the liquid gold beneath its burning sands.
Anyway, isn't it just a matter of getting better "intelligence" from the FBI and the CIA?
Jack A Smith was the former chief editor of the now defunct US progressive newsweekly The Guardian, and presently the editor of a newsletter devoted to political activism. He resides in the Hudson Valley region of New York in the US.

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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Kim ends secretive China visit
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has completed a highly secretive visit to China where he reportedly discussed his country's nuclear standoff with the US.
There was official silence about the visit until it ended, but diplomats said China urged Mr Kim to soften his stance on the nuclear issue.
Mr Kim also reportedly discussed Pyongyang's ailing economy and visited a model farm at the end of his stay.
China is a key ally of North Korea and a mediator in the nuclear standoff.
Jiang Zemin told him the possibility of the US invading North Korea is very slim, indirectly suggesting he should change North Korea's tough line
South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo
Mr Kim is believed to have arrived in China on Monday, but there was no mention of his visit in China's official media until Wednesday, when state broadcaster CCTV said the two countries had reached a "broad consensus" on a range of issues, including the nuclear crisis.
China's Xinhua news agency said the two sides had agreed to "continue jointly pushing forward" for six-party talks aimed at resolving the crisis, though it gave few further details.
"Leaders of the two parties and the two countries, amid a cordial, friendly and candid atmosphere, briefed each other on their respective domestic conditions, and exchanged views and reached wide-ranging consensus on further developing the relations between the two parties and the two countries, international and regional situations and the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula," Xinhua said.
During his stay, Mr Kim held talks with China's president and military officials, including ex-president Jiang Zemin, who remains in charge of the military.
Mr Kim voiced doubts about whether he would win the security guarantees he wants in return for stopping his nuclear programme, the South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo said.
"Jiang Zemin told him the possibility of the US invading North Korea is very slim, indirectly suggesting he should change North Korea's tough line," it reported.
Model farm
Multi-party talks on the issue have made little progress on how North Korea's programme could be dismantled, or how Pyongyang's energy and security concerns would be addressed.
In February, China said North Korea had agreed to push towards a third round of international talks.
Xinhua quoted Mr Kim as saying North Korea would continue to take part in the talks, and that its approach would be "patient and flexible".
Discussions on North Korea's economy also figured prominently during Mr Kim's visit, his first since a new leadership was installed in Beijing last year.
The North Korean leader asked China's leaders for help with reforms and for aid, South Korean media said.
Mr Kim's party reportedly visited a model farm near Beijing on Wednesday, before he started a 15-hour journey back home on his special train.
The farm, which used to be poor but is now one of the richest in the country, pursued a rapid modernisation programme in the 1980s, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
The secrecy surrounding Mr Kim's visit was not unusual.
His two previous known trips to China since 2000 were confirmed by the two governments only after he returned home.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/3644787.stm
Published: 2004/04/21 10:53:36 GMT

? BBC MMIV
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>> WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?


Russia: High-Level EU Delegation Travels To Moscow To Discuss WTO Bid
By Ahto Lobjakas

A high-level European Commission delegation headed by President Romano Prodi heads to Moscow tonight for two days of talks with President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials. EU officials in Brussels say the visit will center on Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Although recent progress has been made on the issue in talks between Moscow and Brussels, Russia might still have to wait before getting a green light from the EU.
Brussels, 21 April 2004 (RFE/RL) -- EU officials today downplayed speculation that a deal is about to be made on Russia's WTO membership.
Speaking in Brussels today, Matthew Baldwin, a top European Commission trade official, said Russia appears interested in speeding up talks, and may be hoping to strike a deal in time for the EU-Russia summit in May.
He said the EU is willing to support Russia's WTO timetable but cautioned that Brussels will not compromise on important issues simply in order to meet tight deadlines.
Baldwin indicated a breakthrough on the contentious issue of energy pricing may not be too far off. He said Russia has retreated from its earlier insistence that energy policy remain outside the WTO talks.
Arancha Sanchez, a spokeswoman for the EU's trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, said the EU has made clear it is not trying to force a particular energy policy on Russia.
Instead, she said, the bloc is simply concerned with what it sees as preferential treatment given to Russian operators in the energy field in comparison with their EU counterparts.
"Energy is not the issue," Sanchez said. "It's trade-related energy questions that are the issue. As Matthew [Baldwin] said, we're not trying to regulate, through the WTO entry of Russia, what kind of energy policy they need to have. That's their own sovereign decision. If you talk about export duties on energy, export duties is clearly an issue that is regulated at the WTO. If you talk about freedom of transit, this is clearly an article of the WTO-GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] agreement. "
The EU is concerned by Russia's policy of charging EU companies four or five times more for gas than Russian counterparts are expected to pay.
"Some very tough things are out there, some very big political issues surrounding things like aircraft tariffs, car tariffs." -- Matthew Baldwin, a top European Commission trade officialBaldwin today said this practice gives Russia's industrial enterprises an unfair advantage over their EU competitors.
He said, however, that Russia has "in principle" accepted that an increase in domestic energy prices is inevitable. The question that remains is to what level and how fast.
Baldwin also underlined the importance for the EU of an energy partnership with Russia. Some 25 percent of the bloc's total gas consumption comes from Russia, as does 20 percent of its crude-oil imports.
Baldwin said the main issue for the 22-23 April meetings is customs tariffs -- a complex question that is likely to play a decisive role in EU-Russia talks overall.
"We've had complexities arising also from Russia's desire to protect its growing tax base -- and obviously you cut tariffs, you reduce your tax base. Now, our guys in Russia have been working very hard on this during the course of this week. We hope to make progress; some very tough things are out there, some very big political issues surrounding things like aircraft tariffs, car tariffs. That is the tough [issue] this week, and depending on how all that goes we'll have more or less a sense of how long the whole negotiation can go," Baldwin said.
Baldwin said talks are stalled on a number of issues. He mentioned financial sectors such as insurance and banking, where the EU wants its companies to be able to branch directly into Russia without having to set up local subsidiaries. Another key concern is the telecommunications sector. The EU has rejected recent Russian attempts to establish a monopoly on long-distance phone services.
Russia's WTO talks with the EU are complicated by a number of other important outstanding issues, such as the extension of the EU-Russia partnership to the bloc's new member states. Russia's unwillingness to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming is another obstacle.
Apart from the EU, Russia will also need to negotiate deals with its other major trade partners -- such as the United States and China -- before it can enter the WTO.

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>> THE VISION THING 2...

Health Savings Accounts: How To Broaden Health Coverage for Working Families
by Nina Owcharenko
WebMemo #481

April 16, 2004 | printer-friendly format |


Embodied in the recently enacted Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 were provisions to establish Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for the general population. These accounts, while not directly related to reforming the troubled Medicare program, do offer a new health care coverage option for the non-Medicare population. HSAs offer a variety of unique benefits, including more choice, greater control, and individual ownership.

There are two key components to a Health Savings Account: (1) a high-deductible health plan and (2) a tax-preferred savings account. However, in order to qualify for the tax-preferred savings, a high-deductible health plan must accompany the account. The law establishes some basic parameters for both of these design features:

High-Deductible Health Plan (HDHP). A high-deductible health plan is a health plan that establishes a higher deductible for an individual to meet before the insurance plan begins to pay. Such plans help to reduce the premium but still provide protection from unexpected, catastrophic health care expenses.

To qualify for an HSA, a high-deductible plan must have a minimum deductible of $1,000 for an individual policy and $2,000 for a family policy. The maximum annual out-of-pocket spending (including deductibles and co-pays) can be no more than $5,000 for an individual and no more than $10,000 for a family. Such HDHPs are able to have first-dollar coverage for preventive care and allow for higher out-of-pocket payments (co-pays and co-insurance) for non-network services.

Tax-Preferred Savings Account. A tax-preferred savings account allows an individual to make deposits and distributions for health care expenditures "tax free" without a tax penalty. An individual may establish this tax-preferred savings account in conjunction with the HDHP.

The law establishes several basic rules for contributing to such an account. The maximum that can be contributed is the lesser of (1) the amount of the high deductible or (2), as specified by law, $2,600 for an individual and $5,150 for a family. Besides the individual owner of the account, an employer and others can contribute on behalf of the individual. "Catch-up" contributions are allowed for individuals who are 55 and older; however, contributions must stop once the individual is eligible for Medicare.

The law also establishes rules for distributions from account funds. Primarily, distributions can be made "tax free" if used for "qualified medical expenses" as described in existing law. They may not be used to pay for other health insurance except for (1) coverage while unemployed, (2) COBRA, and (3) qualified long-term care insurance. For those who are eligible for Medicare, the accounts may be used for the following: (1) Medicare premiums and other out-of-pocket expenses relating to Medicare and (2) the employee share of employer-based (retiree) coverage.
The Evolution of Health Savings Accounts

Even before the enactment of Health Savings Accounts, efforts to give individuals greater control of their health care spending were well underway. A variety of "consumer-directed" approaches still exist today, albeit with some awkward constraints. Health Savings Accounts attempt to overcome those constraints by combining the positive features of the existing approaches while making them more accessible and useful for consumers.

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs). These tax-advantaged account options, offered through an employer, allow employees to set aside pre-tax dollars through salary reduction. The funds in these accounts can be used for medical and dental expense not covered by insurance. However, any funds left over at the end of the year are forfeited to the employer. Similar to FSAs, HSAs allow for the tax-preferred savings element, but they also permit an individual to carry over any unused funds from year to year, allowing those funds to accrue along the way.
Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs). These employer-sponsored arrangements enable employers to make a financial contribution on behalf of their employees to help reimburse them for medical expenses. Any unused funds can be carried over from year to year but remain the property of the employer. Many employers combine these arrangements with a high-deductible health plan to ensure catastrophic protection. HSAs maintain the carry-over provisions of the HRA and require the high-deductible component; unlike HRAs, however, they grant ownership of the account and plan to the individual, not the employer, thereby giving the consumer full control and allowing for full portability.
Medical Savings Accounts (Archer MSAs). These accounts, similar to the new HSAs, were strangled by excessive and restrictive regulations. Not only were the accounts temporary, but the number available was limited to 750,000, and they were offered only to businesses with fewer than 50 employees and/or self-employed. Furthermore, contributions could be made only by the employee or the employer, not by both, and could not exceed 65 percent of the deductible for an individual policy and 75 percent for a family policy. The minimum deductible was set at $1,700 for an individual and $3,450 for a family policy. These restrictions, among others, confined the access and market opportunities of the Archer MSAs. As outlined earlier, the HSA keeps the basic framework of the traditional Archer MSA but gets rid of the numerous regulatory and design obstacles challenging MSAs in order to create a more conducive and stable marketplace for HSAs.
Recommendations

While HSAs are now law, their practical implementation is still critical. Several steps can be taken to ensure the success of Health Savings Accounts. For example:

Further rulings by the U.S. Treasury Department should remain broad and flexible. A variety of issues, such as the interaction between HSAs and HRAs/FSAs, remain unresolved and will need attention. Thus far, Treasury has been particularly accommodating in establishing the parameters within which these accounts can exist. It is important that such interpretations continue in order to encourage a responsive marketplace for HSAs.
States must make all legislative and regulatory changes needed to ensure that HSAs have market access. In some instances, state legislative and regulatory changes may need to be made in order to accommodate the availability of HSAs. For example, states may need to change their tax laws to adapt to the tax-free accounts. Changes or an exemption from state-mandated benefits may also be in order to ensure that HDHPs are qualified in the state.
All employers should integrate an HSA option into health benefit offerings for their employees. HRAs open up opportunities for businesses of all sizes to offer their employees a new coverage option. This includes federal and state employee benefit plans. With health care spending on the rise, an HSA helps to re-engage employees with their health care spending while giving employers the ability to make the transition from a defined benefit system, with open-ended costs, to a defined contribution system in which health care spending can be better managed.
Policymakers should encourage HSAs for the uninsured since they offer an alternative to more costly first-dollar coverage policies. Uninsured individuals will find that, due to the high-deductible component, the monthly premiums will be much lower than premiums for traditional policies. The HSA design ensures that individuals remain protected against unexpected, catastrophic medical costs while allowing them to save for future health care expenses tax-free.
Conclusions

Health Savings Accounts offer Americans a new coverage option for their health care needs. They give them a new choice in coverage design, greater control of their health care spending, and the ability to own their own health care plans. These are all key features in moving America's health care system to a consumer-based system.

To build a true consumer market, individuals should have access to all available coverage options. There should be a level playing field between each option, whether it is an HSA, an HMO, a PPO, or another form of coverage. Individuals should be able to choose, without penalty or artificial incentives, the policies they feel best fit their needs. Members of Congress should continue to look for ways to facilitate a system of consumer choice that will allow individuals to select the plans that best suit their individual medical and financial needs.

Nina Owcharenko is Senior Policy Analyst in the Center for Health Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

? 1995 - 2004 The Heritage Foundation
All Rights Reserved.
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>> 4...

'Dying Diana' pictures set to spark outrage
April 22, 2004 - 11:30AM

Pictures of a dying Diana, Princess of Wales are due to be broadcast on television in the United States, it emerged today, in a move that is set to provoke outrage.
Clarence House declined to comment on the matter but the images will no doubt bring further distress to Princes William and Harry, who have faced continued conspiracy theories.
They have also had to contend with old video footage of the princess talking about her life that was recently aired on US TV.
The never-before-seen photographs will show the stricken princess moments after the 1997 car crash in Paris, which led to her death hours later.
The pictures will be shown on the US network CBS, which said it had attained a copy of the confidential French investigation report into the crash.
CBS's 48 Hours program has obtained thousands of pages of confidential documents, including the forensic analysis and post-mortem examination of the driver Henri Paul and analysis of the car.
A program spokeswoman said the show would also include images of Diana at the scene after the crash, and would look at persistent rumours that the Princess was pregnant when she died.
According to CBS, the report says Mr Paul was receiving money from an unknown source.
Diana's former protection officer Ken Wharfe and Patrick Jephson, her chief of staff, are interviewed on the show.
They tell of the great lengths they went to to hide Diana's marriage difficulties, and how she conducted extramarital affairs.
Diana and Dodi Fayed were killed in the crash, which also claimed the life of driver Mr Paul.
A spokesman for Mohamed al Fayed said Dodi's father was waiting to see what the broadcast contained but that the use of photographs of Diana in the aftermath of the crash would be "distressing and distasteful".
Chester Stern said: "I know he would be upset by this."
He added: "All we know of is the stills which appeared in newspaper offices that night in Britain which were not published by the editors.
"We have always believed that was the correct decision.
"It would be distressing and distasteful."
Mr al Fayed has staged a lengthy legal battle against paparazzi photographers who were following Diana and Dodi that night for invasion of privacy.
Mr al Fayed tonight accused CBS of cashing in on the tragedy.
He said: "This was a crime - the murder of two innocent people.
"CBS obviously don't care about the appalling effect of showing images of murder victims.
"They simply want to cash in on the tragedy.
"It is disgraceful and insensitive of them to do this.
"It is devastating for me and for Prince William and Prince Harry."

PA

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>> AHEM 5...

Blushes at the Bundesbank

Apr 21st 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda

The Bundesbank has a new president, to replace the disgraced Ernst Welteke. But does Europe have too many central bankers for its own good?
AFP

Welteke regrets
Get article background

OH, TO be a central banker! A monopoly supplier of a much sought-after commodity (money), you have no competitors to worry about and no voters to answer to. You get a month between meetings and, to hear the European Central Bank tell it, all your decisions are made by cosy consensus.

Axel Weber, a professor of economics based in Cologne and an independent adviser to the German government, is the latest recruit to this privileged guild. On Tuesday April 20th, he was named as the new head of Germany's Bundesbank, a position that will also give him a vote on euro-area interest rates at the European Central Bank. Desirable as his new job may be, Mr Weber will be careful not to enjoy it quite as conspicuously as the man he replaces, Ernst Welteke.

Mr Welteke resigned last Friday, to end a two-week controversy over a hotel bill for ?7,661 (then around $7,200), paid by one of the commercial banks the Bundesbank helps to supervise. Mr Welteke and his family ran up the bill at one of Berlin's fanciest hotels while attending a party to celebrate the introduction of euro notes and coins at the start of 2002. After the junket came to light in the German press, Mr Welteke apologised, and he and the Bundesbank repaid the money. But that was not enough to save his job. Officials will now hesitate before accepting such junkets and jollies in the future.

Mr Welteke did not go quietly. Trust between him and the finance ministry had been "destroyed", he complained in his angry resignation letter. False claims leaked to the media were assailing his integrity and that of the Bundesbank, he said.

Several German newspapers have speculated that the finance ministry had tipped off the press about the hotel visit, which the ministry strongly denies. It wanted Mr Welteke gone, so the speculation goes, because he was critical of the government's budget deficit and wanted to keep the proceeds from a possible sale of Bundesbank gold away from the finance ministry's hands. Certainly, Hans Eichel, Germany's finance minister, did not rush to defend his former colleague in the state government of Hesse. "I consider it is not acceptable that the chief representative of the Bank, which also has supervisory functions, should accept a holiday for himself and his family paid for by a bank which is under supervision," he told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

This lack of discretion on the part of the Bundesbank's boss may have encouraged Gerhard Schr?der, Germany's chancellor, to look outside the bank for Mr Welteke's successor. Mr Weber is no monetary naif: he "knows the central banks in Europe like the back of his hand," said Klaus Zimmermann, president of the DIW, a Berlin think-tank, according to the Reuters news agency. But Mr Weber will step into his new role at the Bundesbank unencumbered by any of the rancour and bitterness of the Welteke quarrel.

He will also arrive at the ECB at a delicate moment for European monetary policy. Europe's recovery has not proceeded as smoothly or as strongly as the ECB must have hoped. Surveys of confidence and activity are patchy. Inflation is comfortably below the ECB's ceiling of 2%. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development thinks a rate cut might be necessary. On the other hand, the euro has come down from its highs at the start of the year, and inflation may have bottomed out. Mr Schr?der has already called on the ECB to cut rates. But fears that he would appoint a political flunky to the Bundesbank to carry out his bidding have proven unfounded. Mr Weber is widely seen as an independent figure.

Even if Mr Schr?der does not get the interest-rate cut he wants, he will still be grateful to be spared any more of Mr Welteke's sermons on fiscal policy. Mr Welteke used the "bully pulpit" of the Bundesbank to call for tighter belts and bolder reforms in Germany. His unceremonious fall may deter anyone else from mounting the pulpit any time soon. That may be a pity. Six of the single currency's 12 member states are this year forecast to run deficits above the ceiling of 3% of GDP set in the euro area's stability and growth pact. The European Commission, the guardian of the pact, was defanged by member states last November when it tried to sink its teeth into the two most egregious offenders, France and Germany. It thus falls more than ever to the ECB and its governors to promote whatever co-ordination is possible between the euro area's 12 independent fiscal policies.

The ECB has no formal powers or responsibilities in the fiscal realm, of course. But it can still employ "moral suasion" and the implicit threat of higher interest rates. In America, for example, budgetmakers in the White House and Congress go looking for the approval, however tacit, of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. He never gives his explicit endorsement, of course, but presidents and congressmen tend to claim it anyway.

Unfortunately, sermons on the virtues of lean government by Europe's central bankers ring hollow. The European System of Central Banks, as the ECB and the 12 national central banks are jointly called, is bloated and rife with duplication. The euro area employs twice as many central bankers as the United States, in proportion to their populations. Some of those monetary mandarins are also paid much more highly than their transatlantic equivalents. Mr Welteke, for example, earned more than twice Mr Greenspan's salary. He topped a Bundesbank payroll that, despite staff cuts last year, still exceeds 14,000--a number worthy perhaps of the bank's past role as monetary hegemon of Europe, but less suited to its new status as one of 12 "branch offices" of the ECB.

The slimming down of Europe's central banks should start at the top. At the moment, the ECB's monetary policy is made by 12 governors from the national central banks plus six ECB executives. Eighteen is already too many, argues Francesco Giavazzi of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a London think-tank. The rate-setting committee would become quite unworkable should the remaining 13 members of the enlarged EU join the single currency. The ECB has proposed capping the number of voting seats at 21. It would reserve six for ECB officials and four for Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Britain (should it adopt the euro). The remaining seats would rotate among the other euro members according to a complicated formula that ensures Luxembourg, a tiny country with a relatively large financial system, votes more often than Poland, a large country with a relatively small financial system. Such a committee, critics suggest, would be unfair as well as unwieldy: a rigged game of musical chairs.

The single currency's champions always argued that it would usher in a leaner, more efficient Europe, as national industries that used to duplicate each other consolidated and operated at a more efficient, euro-wide scale. Europe's system of central banks, guardians of the single currency, should embrace this beneficial trend. As Mr Giavazzi points out, a smaller rate-setting council would be more decisive and less tied to national governments. It would also have fewer hotel bills to pay.

Copyright ? 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 21. April 2004, 18:16
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0,1518,296407,00.html
Aufruhr an Bundesbankpr?sidenten-Uni

"Achtung, alle Vorlesungen finden statt!"

Von Tim H?finghoff

Die Universit?t K?ln freut sich, dass mit Axel Weber einer ihrer Hochschullehrer neuer Bundesbank-Pr?sident wird. Einige Studenten bringt der Aufstieg des Professors aber in N?te: Sie f?rchten um ihre eigene Karriere.
DDP
"Summa cum laude: W?hrungswissenschaftler Axel Weber mit Finanzminister Hans Eichel
Das Telefon stand nicht mehr still. Im Sekretariat des Lehrstuhls f?r Internationale ?konomie an der Universit?t zu K?ln meldeten sich pausenlos besorgte Studenten. Alle hatten nur eine Frage: "Wie geht es mit meinem Studium weiter?" Am Dienstagabend war durchgesickert, dass der K?lner Wirtschaftsprofessor Axel Weber neuer Bundesbankpr?sident werden soll, nachdem Ernst Welteke wegen der Adlon-Aff?re von seinem Amt zur?ckgetreten war.
Die Mitarbeiter von Axel Weber beruhigten die Studenten und platzierten auf der Webseite des Instituts die Meldung: "Achtung: Alle Vorlesungen finden wie gewohnt statt!" Im H?rsaal wurde Axel Weber, der nach Berlin zu Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schr?der und Finanzminster Hans Eichel eilte, durch einen Assistenten vertreten.
An der Universit?t l?ste die Entscheidung, Weber f?r das Amt zu nominieren, Freude aus: "Wir sind sehr stolz", sagt Pressesprecher Wolfgang Mathias, "aber es ?berrascht uns nicht total." Grund: Schon h?ufiger seien Absolventen der WISO-Fakult?t sp?ter ber?hmt geworden. Bundespr?sident Karl Carstens studierte ?konomie in K?ln und seit 20 Jahren arbeiten immer wieder Professoren aus K?ln als Wirtschaftsweise im Sachverst?ndigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.
Ein Ruf wie Donnerhall
Die Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakult?t in K?ln ist mit 9700 Studenten die gr??te in Europa. "Die Fakult?t ist sehr attraktiv, weil sie nicht nur eine hohe wissenschaftliche Reputation, sondern auch einen hohen Praxisbezug hat," sagt Mathias.
Juergen B. Donges, 63, Professor f?r Wirtschaftspolitik, nutzte die Weber-Wahl, um in seiner Vorlesung den Praxisbezug des K?lner Studiums anzupreisen: "Was man hier lernt, kann man auch in der aktuellen Wirtschaftspolitik nutzen."
Donges war bis 2001 Vorsitzender der Wirtschaftsweisen, bis ihn Axel Weber im Sachverst?ndigenrat abl?ste. "Wir freuen uns, dass es einer von uns ist", sagte Donges. "Ich habe mit allen gerechnet, aber Weber hatte ich nicht auf meiner Liste."
Weber werde ein Bundesbankpr?sident werden, der sich "nicht von der Politik in die Enge treiben l?sst", glaubt Donges. Er beherrsche die wissenschaftliche Argumentation auf hohem Niveau. Im Rat der Europ?ischen Zentralbank wird Weber die Bundesbank vertreten und die europ?ische Geldpolitik mitbestimmen.
Stationen in Gro?britannien, USA und den Niederlanden
Seit November 2001 lehrt Weber an der Universit?t K?ln Neue Internationale Makro?konomik und Au?enwirtschaftslehre. Zuvor war er Professor f?r Angewandte monet?re ?konomie an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universit?t Frankfurt am Main.
Weber studierte von 1976 bis 1982 Wirtschaftswissenschaften und Verwaltungswissenschaften an der Universit?t Konstanz und promovierte 1987 in Siegen mit "Summa cum laude". Nach Stationen in Gro?britannien, den Niederlanden und den USA habilitierte er sich 1994 an der Universit?t Siegen. Seit 1998 ist er Direktor des Center of Financial Studies in Frankfurt am Main und gilt als Experte f?r Geldpolitik und internationale Wirtschaftspolitik.
Nicht nur Professoren auch Studenten loben den designierten Bundesbankpr?sidenten: "Es ist sehr schade, das Weber nun f?r die Lehre ausf?llt", sagt der Vorsitzende der WISO-Fachschaft, Joscha Brun?en.
Unter den Studenten gilt Weber als f?higer Praktiker und Didakt. "Als Professor hat er gute Qualit?ten und kann den Stoff gut vermitteln", sagt Gloria Rose, 25, die im zehnten Semester VWL studiert. "Ich halte ihn f?r einen der besten Professoren an der Universit?t." Weber habe p?dagogische F?higkeiten, von denen sich andere Professoren noch viel abschauen k?nnten. Er sei gut vorbereitet und gehe immer auf spontane Fragen der Studenten ein. Es habe ihr Spa? gemacht, sich auf Webers Vorlesungen vorzubereiten, erz?hlt Rose. "Dieses Gef?hl hatte ich an der Uni sonst noch nie."
F?r das Amt beurlaubt
Philip Vogel, 26-j?hriger VWL-Student im neunten Semester, beschreibt Weber weniger schmeichelhaft: "Er wirkte auf mich, als ob er die Lehre nicht immer so ernst nimmt." Weber mache lieber einw?chige Blockveranstaltung, als Vorlesungen ?ber einige Wochen verteilt zu halten. "Manchmal glaube ich, er will Ruhe vor den Studenten haben." Andere Studenten bezeichnen Weber auch als eitel.
Ob exzellent oder eitel, die Universit?t K?ln muss sich schleunigst um einen Vertreter f?r Weber bem?hen. "Weber bleibt der Fakult?t erst einmal erhalten und wird f?r die Zeit bei der Bundesbank beurlaubt", sagt Pressesprecher Mathias. Aber nach der Zeit bei der Bundesbank komme Weber bestimmt wieder nach K?ln zur?ck.
Studentin Gloria Rose plagen andere Sorgen: "Die Nachricht, dass Weber geht, ist schockierend", sagt Gloria Rose. "Ich wollte bei ihm Diplomarbeit schreiben."

? SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004
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Copenhagen Consensus

Curbing disease

Apr 15th 2004
From Economist.com

Across the developing world, disease causes a vast toll of avoidable suffering

IN RECENT years, researchers have developed methods to confront a range of diseases--illnesses, in many cases, that put an especially heavy burden on the world's poor. Across much of the planet, but particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the costs of diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS are enormous. So it would seem that the opportunities to do good by spending money wisely on treatment and prevention are very promising. A Copenhagen Consensus* "challenge paper" by Anne Mills and Sam Shillcutt of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine reviews the literature and tries to weigh the costs and benefits of different kinds of intervention.

The article concentrates on approaches that might be taken to control malaria and HIV/AIDS, and in addition on the economics of better basic health services. Malaria and HIV/AIDS cause enormous human and economic harm in developing countries, even though cost-effective methods for controlling them are well understood. There is also a strong case for looking at the broader issue of basic health services. This is because better services would not only directly reduce the burden of many treatable or preventable diseases, but also because some additional investment in these services may be necessary, or at the very least helpful, in improving the cost-effectiveness of interventions aimed specifically at malaria and HIV/AIDS.

The authors explain that the links between illness and economic loss are complicated. In the literature, two main approaches have been taken to study them. The first relies on microeconomic studies. Work of this kind looks at how disease affects individual households or people. One drawback of this approach, though, is that it neglects the broader effects of disease on the economy as a whole. As a result, this method may underestimate both the costs of disease and the benefits of combating it more effectively.

The second approach is to take a macroeconomic view: that is, to measure the influence of a disease on income at the level of the whole economy. This can be done by comparing different economies, to see how far high incidence of disease is correlated with lower incomes, other things being equal. This method is better in principle at capturing all the economic implications of disease, but it has problems of its own. Above all, of course, other things are never equal--so it is often difficult to be sure whether it is differences in the incidence of disease, or other influences, which are determining the differences in economic well-being.

The authors emphasise various shortcomings of the existing research. Differences in data and methods mean that comparing results across studies, countries and different periods is hit and miss. For some diseases, too little useful work has been done. Only two recent macroeconomic studies of malaria have been published, for instance, and thinking on methods and data is therefore at an early stage. Macroeconomic studies of HIV/AIDS are more plentiful, but give wildly differing results, "ranging from minimal impact on per capita income to a massive impact". Another difficult issue is that, in calculating health costs, it is sometimes necessary to put a value on life: the authors take a year of life to be worth a year's national income per head for the country concerned, a plausible working figure but nonetheless an arbitrary one. There are particular difficulties as well in expressing costs and benefits that are spread over time in a way that allows useful comparisons to be made.

Healthy and wealthy?

Nonetheless, the paper presses on, drawing where it may on an occasionally sparse and frequently inadequate literature, gleaning results from many different studies using many different methods of research. Despite all the complications and uncertainties, the answer that emerges is pretty clear: the best new investments in the control of communicable diseases would yield huge economic benefits. Across a wide range of interventions, and for all three categories of initiative under review--control of malaria, control of HIV/AIDS and improved basic health services--benefits typically exceed costs by a wide margin.

In some cases, the economic opportunities are simply spectacular. A programme to prevent HIV in Thailand, for instance, achieved a ratio of benefits to costs of 15 to one--a figure that governments could scarcely dream of achieving for typical public-investment projects in other economic sectors. A malaria-control programme in South Africa actually resulted in net cost savings, so that it paid for itself even before the benefits of the initiative were taken into account.

In its World Development Report of 1993, the World Bank proposed a package of health interventions, organised around the idea of scaling up basic health services. It included such efforts as expanding immunisation against measles, poliomyelitis, tetanus, whooping cough, yellow fever and hepatitis-B; AIDS prevention; school health programmes (aimed especially at treating intestinal worms); treatment of TB; treatment of sexually transmitted diseases; family planning; and so on. Considered as a package, the plan would be expensive by the standard of proposals in this area, but not so expensive, you might think, when seen in context: one estimate puts it at $12 per person in low-income developing countries and $22 in middle-income developing countries, for a developing-world average of $15 per person. This spending would, it is argued, reduce the economic burden of disease by some 32%, 15% and 25% respectively, with a net economic benefit on the order of $500 billion, and a ratio of benefits to costs of 2.6.

So far as establishing priorities among different health programmes is concerned, the authors conclude that it is unclear, given the present state of knowledge, whether better results can be gained from a concentrated effort to deal with specific diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS or from a strategy based on broader improvements in basic health services. To some degree, however, the two approaches overlap--and they are certainly not, in any case, mutually exclusive. In short, the evidence suggests that efforts to control disease offer an unusually good opportunity to spend aid productively.

* The Copenhagen Consensus project, organised by Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute with the co-operation of The Economist, aims to consider, and to establish priorities among, a series of proposals for advancing global welfare. The initiative was described in our Economics focus of March 6th. That article, along with other material, can be read here.


Copyright ? 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

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Economics focus

A remedy for financial turbulence?

Apr 15th 2004
From The Economist print edition

In the first of a series of articles on the Copenhagen Consensus project*, we look at financial instability

THE severity and frequency of financial crises, especially the combined currency and banking collapses of the past decade, have made financial instability a scourge of our times, one that bears comparison with damage inflicted by famine and war. In a new paper for the Copenhagen Consensus, Barry Eichengreen, from the University of California, Berkeley, has reviewed the literature, attempted to count these costs, and to weigh them against the costs of a particular proposal for remedial action.

The costs can be reckoned in stalled growth and stunted lives. The typical financial crisis claims 9% of GDP, and the worst crises, such as those recently afflicting Argentina and Indonesia, wiped out over 20% of GDP, a loss greater even than those endured as a result of the Great Depression. According to one authoritative study, the Asian financial crisis of 1997 pushed 22m people in the region into poverty. For developing countries, currency crises are an important subset of financial crises. Mr Eichengreen, while cautioning against taking the precision of such estimates too seriously, reckons that the benefit which emerging-market countries would reap if such crises could be avoided altogether would be some $107 billion a year.

One ready way to secure those benefits, you might think, would be to stifle financial markets. In impoverished parts of Africa, for example, credit crunches are relatively rare, because credit is always hard to come by. But as a rule such a solution would be more costly than the problem. Wherever financial markets are absent or repressed, savings go unused, productive economic opportunities go unrealised and risks go undiversified. If India's banks and stockmarkets were as well developed as Singapore's, India would grow two percentage-points a year faster, according to one study.

To grow fast, and keep growing quickly, countries need deep financial markets--and the best way to deepen financial markets, most economists agree, is to liberalise them. Does this mean that countries must open their financial markets to foreign capital, thus exposing themselves to the risk of currency crises? Or should they impose capital controls, confining the perversity of financial markets to national borders, where the central bank retains the power to offset it? Foreign direct investment aside, China's capital markets are still largely closed to outsiders. Yet it has no shortage of credit. For other countries, though, the evidence is mixed. A fair reading of the studies, and there have been many, suggests that, for most countries, opening up to foreign capital will deliver faster growth in most years--punctuated by a damaging financial crisis about every ten years. Some economists argue that periodic credit crunches are the price emerging markets must pay for faster growth.

What might be done to make financial crises less common? The answer depends on the causes of financial meltdown. Governments bring some crises on themselves by pursuing fiscal and monetary policies that are inconsistent and unsustainable. Such self-defeating policies may be the symptom of deeper flaws in the body politic. If so, there is little outsiders can do. But some countries' financial fragility results simply from their need for foreign investment. In the most susceptible countries, firms and banks borrow heavily in dollars, while lending in local currencies. If the value of the local currency wobbles, this mismatch between domestic assets and foreign liabilities is cruelly exposed.

Why are the assets and liabilities of emerging markets so ill matched? Perhaps because poorly supervised and largely unaccountable managers have scant reason to be careful with other people's money. But Mr Eichengreen offers another reason. International investors are very choosy about currencies. Most consider only bonds denominated in dollars, yen, euros, pounds or Swiss francs. This select club of international currencies is locked in for deep historical and structural reasons. Thus, poor countries that want to borrow abroad must bear currency mismatches through no fault of their own.

Match-making
If this is the problem, possible solutions follow naturally: either create a common world currency, used by rich and poor alike, or invent a liquid, international market for bonds denominated in the pesos, bahts and rupiahs that emerging markets are obliged to use. The first solution, even if it were desirable, is politically impossible; the second is merely very difficult. Mr Eichengreen spells out in his study an ingenious plan to make it a little easier. Briefly, he proposes the creation of a market for lending and borrowing in a synthetic unit of account, a weighted basket of emerging-market currencies. Such bonds would be popular with investors, since the currency would be more stable than the sum of its parts and, at first at least, carry attractive yields. Importantly, such a market, if it could be established, would eventually let emerging-market economies tap foreign capital without currency mismatches. This is because those, such as the World Bank, that issued such bonds would be keen to reduce their exposure to the basket by lending to the countries in that basket in their own currencies.

However, there is a cost: the extra yield that the Bank and others would need to offer to attract buyers of the new instruments. Mr Eichengreen estimates that this initial cost would be no more than $545m a year--a small sum compared with the $107 billion that would be saved if currency crises could be avoided.

* The Copenhagen Consensus project, organised by Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute with the co-operation of The Economist, aims to consider, and to establish priorities among, a series of proposals for advancing global welfare. The initiative was described in our Economics focus of March 6th. That article can be read here, along with other material, including an article on disease published only online this week.


Copyright ? 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
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>> AHEM 6...

Le mythe de l'origine du sida li?e ? un vaccin polio contamin? r?fut?
LEMONDE.FR | 21.04.04 | 21h10
La th?orie qui attribue l'apparition du sida ? un vaccin polio oral contamin?, utilis? dans les ann?es 50 en Afrique, dans l'ancien Congo Belge, est "r?fut?e" par une ?quipe internationale conduite par un biologiste de l'?volution am?ricain, "preuve directe" ? l'appui. Leur recherche para?t dans la revue scientifique britannique Nature dat?e de jeudi.
Selon cette th?orie, persistante malgr? de solides arguments allant ? son encontre, rel?vent les chercheurs, la transmission du sida ? l'homme r?sulterait d'une contamination de ce vaccin par du virus du sida du singe (VIS). Michael Worobey, biologiste de l'?volution ? l'universit? d'Arizona, est retourn? sur place en 2003 en R?publique D?mocratique du Congo (RDC), dans la r?gion de Kisangani, Stanleyville ? l'?poque. Les chercheurs ont ainsi d?couvert un nouveau variant du virus du sida du singe - le VIScpzRDC1 (en Anglais SIVcpzDRC1) - parmi les chimpanz?s de cette r?gion.
La nouvelle souche de VIS n'est pas l'une de celles dont est issu le VIH-1, le virus responsable de la pand?mie du sida humaine, affirment les chercheurs, apr?s analyse g?n?tique. "Cette d?couverte apporte une preuve directe que ces chimpanz?s (de la r?gion en cause) ne sont pas la source de la pand?mie de sida humaine" et "r?fute la th?orie du vaccin" polio contamin?, ?crivent-ils.
Pour d?fendre leur point de vue, les chercheurs s'appuient en tout cas sur le fait qu'ils n'ont pas trouv? dans les 97 pr?l?vements de selles de chimpanz?s recueillis de virus apparent? ? celui du sida humain .
BARRI?RE D'ESP?CE
Deux journalistes am?ricains, Tom Curtis (1992, magazine Rolling Stone) et Edgard Hooper (1999, livre The River), ont mis en cause le vaccin anti-polio de l'Am?ricain Hilary Koprowski administr? de 1957 ? 1960 ? un million de personnes, en grande partie dans l'ex-Za?re (RDC).
Hooper a d?velopp? une th?orie reliant cette campagne de vaccination exp?rimentale et l'apparition du sida, arguant que des tissus de chimpanz?s, potentiellement contamin?s, auraient servi ? fabriquer cette ancienne version de vaccin oral. Les scientifiques sont d'accord sur un point : le virus du sida humain (VIH) a pour anc?tre un virus de l'immunod?ficience simienne (VIS) du chimpanz?. Mais reste ? d?terminer quand et comment ce virus de singe a franchi la barri?re d'esp?ce pour passer ? l'homme. Selon l'?tude, le nouveau virus du chimpanz? appartient ? une branche diff?rente de l'arbre g?n?alogique ("phylog?n?tique") des virus de chimpanz? apparent?s au VIH.
S'appuyant sur leur d?couverte et les analyses ant?rieures d'?chantillons du vaccin de l'?poque montrant l'absence de VIS, de VIH ou d'ADN de chimpanz?, les chercheurs estiment que l'hypoth?se reliant le sida ? ce vaccin contre la poliomy?lite "devrait ?tre abandonn?e". M.Worobey a poursuivi cette recherche en m?moire d'un confr?re britannique renomm?, Bill Hamilton, mort de paludisme en 2000 au retour de la premi?re exp?dition. Worobey d?sire maintenant "?tudier cette zone g?ographique, pr?lever plus d'?chantillons, comprendre comment le virus simien se maintient et se transmet parmi les chimpanz?s et comprendre pourquoi il (sa version humaine) est si pathog?ne pour l'Homme mais pas pour le chimpanz?". Ce travail est co-sign? par d'autres chercheurs za?rois, britanniques et am?ricains.
Avec AFP

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L'imam salafiste de V?nissieux, favorable ? la lapidation, a ?t? expuls? pour "atteinte ? l'ordre public"
LE MONDE | 21.04.04 | 13h58
Abdelkader Bouziane ?tait sous le coup d'un arr?t? depuis le 26 f?vrier. Ses propos sur le droit de battre les femmes dans le mensuel "Lyon Mag" ont pr?cipit? son d?part mercredi.
Lyon de notre correspondante

Abdelkader Bouziane, 52 ans, a ?t? expuls?, mercredi 21 avril, au matin et plac? dans un avion en partance pour l'Alg?rie, son pays d'origine. Le ministre de l'int?rieur, Dominique de Villepin, avait d?cid? la veille d'appliquer imm?diatement l'arr?t? d'expulsion de cet imam salafiste de V?nissieux (Rh?ne), pris le 26 f?vrier par son pr?d?cesseur Nicolas Sarkozy.

La parution des propos de l'imam, qui avait d?fendu au nom du Coran la lapidation des femmes dans le num?ro d'avril du mensuel Lyon Mag a pr?cipit? son d?part.

M. Bouziane avait ?t? interpell? mardi apr?s-midi ? Lyon et conduit au centre de r?tention Saint-Exup?ry dans l'attente de son expulsion. Depuis vingt-quatre heures les propos de cet imam de la mosqu?e dite "de l'Urssaf" avaient soulev? une vive pol?mique. Dans un entretien paru d?but avril dans Lyon Magun mensuel lyonnais, le responsable musulman, avait justifi? au nom du Coran l'inf?riorit? de la femme, sa lapidation, la polygamie, et le pros?lytisme. "Battre une femme, expliquait-t-il dans le magazine, c'est autoris? par le Coran, mais dans certaines conditions, notamment si la femme trompe son mari. Dans ce cas, son mari peut la frapper."

L'imam posait juste une restriction, "ne pas frapper n'importe o?" : "pas au visage, mais viser le bas, les jambes o? le ventre". "Il peut frapper fort pour faire peur ? sa femme, afin qu'elle ne recommence plus", pr?cisait-il en affichant sans d?tours sa polygamie, avec deux femmes qui lui ont donn? seize enfants.

Premier responsable politique ? r?agir, le d?put? et maire communiste de V?nissieux, Andr? Gerin avait rendu public lundi 19 avril un courrier envoy? le jour m?me au ministre de l'int?rieur et au garde des sceaux pour leur demander si une enqu?te avait ?t? diligent?e et leur annoncer son intention de d?poser plainte "pour atteinte ? l'ordre public et ? la R?publique". Interrog? sur France 2, Dominique Perben avait assur? mardi 20 avril qu'il avait demand? d?s la parution du mensuel ? la direction des affaires criminelles du minist?re de la justice "d'examiner comment une action en justice pourrait ?tre engag?e". Dans l'apr?s-midi, le parquet de Lyon d?cidait d'ouvrir une enqu?te pr?liminaire tout en pr?cisant n'avoir re?u aucune instruction pr?cise de la Chancellerie.

APPELS AU DJIHAD

En fait, le minist?re de l'int?rieur disposait, de son c?t?, de renseignements sur cet imam, surveill? depuis plusieurs mois. Une enqu?te administrative d?clench?e plusieurs mois avant son arr?t? d'expulsion, avait alert? la place Beauvau sur des pr?ches jug?s "contraires aux valeurs r?publicaines" d'Abdelkader Bouziane, qui s'?tait pos? en chef spirituel des groupes salafistes de la r?gion lyonnaise.Arriv? en France en octobre 1979, comme imam dans une mosqu?e de Ch?lons-sur-Marne, il aurait ensuite rejoint une mosqu?e de Villefranche-sur-Sa?ne, puis celle de la Duch?re ? Lyon avant de se former plusieurs mois en Arabie Saoudite, puis de s'installer ? V?nissieux. Portant barbe et gandoura, l'homme refusait d'?tre film? ou photographi?. Selon les policiers, il aurait lanc? des appels au djihad contre les int?r?ts am?ricains depuis le d?clenchement de la guerre en Irak.

EXPLIQUER LA LOI DU CORAN

Le minist?re de l'int?rieur redoutait qu'il favorise la constitution de groupes islamistes radicaux. Sa mosqu?e ?tait ?troitement surveill?e depuis l'arrestation d'un pr?parateur en pharmacie de V?nissieux, interpell? en m?me temps que l'imam Benchellali, le 6 janvier 2004. Le maire de V?nissieux a pr?cis? qu'il ne disposait, lui, d'aucune information particuli?re sur l'imam Bouziane :"Je ne le connaissais pas et je n'avais re?u aucune alerte sur ses pr?ches".

L'expulsion de l'imam ne cl?t pas l'enqu?te, m?me si les magistrats lyonnais restent sceptiques sur la possibilit? d'une action visant l'imam pour ses propos tenus dans Lyon Mag. L'enqu?te devrait faire la lumi?re sur les conditions de cette interview. Journal habitu? aux "coups" et ? la provocation, Lyon Mag affirme disposer de l'enregistrement de l'entretien, d'une dur?e d'une heure trente, dont seule une petite partie a ?t? publi?e. Interrog? avant son interpellation, mardi, l'imam a confirm? qu'il avait bien tenu ces propos mais seulement pour expliquer la loi du Coran. "La religion autorise cela, mais si la loi en France m'interdit de pr?cher de tel discours, je respecte la loi", a-t-il soutenu.

Les propos de l'imam ont en tout cas provoqu? un v?ritable toll? en France. Responsables politiques et religieux se sont relay?s pour s'indigner. Dalil Boubakeur le pr?sident du conseil fran?ais du culte musulman s'est dit lui "exc?d? d'?tre sans cesse harcel? par une m?diatisation compl?tement irresponsable autour de propos extorqu?s ? des imams frustres et ignorants qui alimente une islamophobie insupportable".

Sophie Landrin

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"Des propos d'un autre ?ge"

Azzedine Gaci, le secr?taire g?n?ral du comit? r?gional du culte musulman de Rh?ne-Alpes a annonc? que cette organisation allait se r?unir mercredi pour ?voquer l'expulsion de l'imam de V?nissieux. Ce responsable de l'UOIF s'est dit tr?s "choqu?" par les propos de M. Bouziane, "des propos d'un autre ?ge, une lecture ultraminoritaire de l'islam, qui vont ? contresens du travail d'adaptation des musulmans fran?ais". M. Gaci estime que cet incident r?v?le l'urgence qu'il y a en France ? imposer des conditions dans le recrutement des imams, notamment la connaissance de la langue et de l'histoire fran?aise, et l'ind?pendance financi?re, politique et intellectuelle afin que l'islam en France ne soit plus dirig? par l'Arabie saoudite, ou des pays du Maghreb.

* ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 22.04.04