North Korea to Deploy Intermediate-Range Missiles, Chosun Says


May 4 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea plans to deploy a new model of intermediate-range ballistic missiles earlier than the U.S. and South Korea had expected, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, citing an unidentified South Korean government official.
North Korea is building two underground missile bases, one in the country's center and the other in the northeast, the paper said. The bases are as much as 80 percent complete and U.S. satellites detected about 10 new missiles and mobile launch pads at the bases between last year and early this year, it said.
The new missiles can fly as far as 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles), reaching the Okinawa islands, Guam and areas near Hawaii, the paper said. Of the North's previously deployed missiles, the longest-range was 1,300 kilometers, covering most of Japan, it said. The new missiles are smaller because they're more technologically advanced, it said.
Western intelligence agency haven't determined whether North Korea has developed the technology for attaching nuclear warheads on missiles, according to South Korean and U.S. media reports. North Korea, the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia are scheduled to hold lower-level talks this month on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons development program.

(Chosun Ilbo 5-4, p.1)



To contact the reporter on this story:
Meeyoung Song in Seoul at msong2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor of this story:
Peter Langan at plangan@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: May 4, 2004 01:27 EDT
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Once Again, North Korea to Make U.S. Terrorism List
WASHINTON, D.C. -- The U.S. will announce its annual report on global terrorism at 10 a.m. Thursday (local time), in which it plans to designate six nations -- including North Korea -- as nations that support terrorism.
A high-ranking U.S. State Department official said Tuesday that while North Korea will be named to the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting states for the 17th year straight, this year's report would specifically mention the kidnapping of Japanese citizens for the first time. The report will include Kim Jong-il's acknowledgement -- made during a February 2002 summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro -- that kidnappings of Japanese citizens were carried out by "special bodies." Accordingly, it has become more difficult for North Korea to escape the yoke of being classified a terrorist state.

14 North Korean defectors, five U.S. lawmakers, and about 200 figures from the religious and human rights group, attend the "North Korea Freedom Day" event on Wednesday and pray for the victims of the Ryongchon train explosion./AFP


The U.S. will designate Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Syria and North Korea as states that support terrorism.

Meanwhile, in speeches given at a "North Korea Freedom Day" rally in front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, five U.S. congressmen called for improvements in North Korea's human rights situation and regime change in the North.

Sen. Sam Brownback, the Republican who heads the East Asia Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that North Koreans have suffered enough under the North Korean dictatorship. "North Korea's oppression must end now," he said. Brownback discussed the Rwanda genocide of 10 years ago and the Holocaust of World War II, and said strong measures, like the quick passing of the "North Korea Freedom Act" currently in both houses of the U.S. Congress, were necessary.

Republican Rep. Edward Royce said, "To ignore North Korea's human rights situation is to distort the challenge facing the Korean Peninsula... The entire world must understand the essence of the North Korean regime and confront it, and more than anything else, it must get its message across to the North in a sincere voice."

Republican Rep. Trent Franks, too, said, "The rally must serve as a jump off point for improving human rights in North Korea," and called for the activation of NGO activity. Republican Rep. James Leach, chairman of the House Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, presided over a hearing on North Korea after the rally and demanded that attention be pain to the 200,000 people being held in North Korean political prisons, human rights abuses and the hardships suffered by defectors and refugees in China.

(Joo Yong-joong, midway@chosun.com )

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>> PHOTOS
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200404/200404270021.html

Ryongchon Survivors Face Wretched Conditions



Injured victim children of the April 2 train explosion lay on hospital beds at the People's hospital in Sinuiju, North Korea , Sunday.

DANDONG, China -- Six days following the powerful train explosion that ripped apart the North Korean town of Ryongchon, vivid evidence of the wretched conditions faced by locals is pouring into the Chinese border town of Dandong.
In particular, distressing news is pilling up from Chinese who have been to the disaster site to look in on ethnic-Chinese relatives who reside there.

One source in Dandong described the situation as "on the brink of death." The critically wounded are dying off as time passes, but because of poor medical facilities, it's common for people to just look on helplessly, he said.

In particular, he said that cries ring out from children who can no longer bear the pain in their bodies broken by debris and fragments from the explosion, but neither their parents nor medical personnel can give them pain killers.

He said, "I went to one Chinese medicine practitioner's, and there were several wounded being treated there. The skin on most of the patients' faces was almost peeled off, and in particular, children were crying with their eyes bandaged."

Young boys injured from the train explosion in Ryongchon Station lie in a hospital in Sinuiju, North Korea on Sunday. Many children's faces were severely burned from the accident.

Everything within a 500-meter radius of the explosion has been turned almost completely to ruin, another source said, but systematic reconstruction efforts were not taking place.

With about half the city of Ryongchon destroyed, thousands have been left homeless, and most of them -- with the exception of those who have found shelter with nearby relatives -- have been reduced to camping outdoors. In particular, when the weather turned cold Monday, blankets that appear to have been provided by the outside as emergency assistance gave the homeless much strength, said the source, but the number given fell way short of the number needed.

Locals are becoming increasingly panicked as time goes on, because not only was the accident a large-scale disaster, but the North Korean authorities have not been carrying out proper rescue operations.
Firstly, locals in Ryongchon are brushing aside the death toll resulting from the calamity claimed by the North Korean authorities -- 160 -- claiming the total is a "laughable number." One source said, "There's still talk going around Ryongchon that the total dead will surpass 2,000... You can't believe everything the locals there say, but the scale of the losses is likely to exceed greatly that which has been officially announced."

Moreover, perhaps because the survivors are so pessimistic about their own situation, but it's said that resentment against North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who passed through the area on the day of the accident, is on the rise. Because of this, talk is spreading among locals that, "some force tried to assassinate Kim, but killed only innocent residence."

Talk is also going round that security personnel got wind of an assassination plot and had Kim's train route hastily changed; his train was originally scheduled to pass through Ryongchon, but some are saying his train passed through nearby Baekhwa Station instead.

An ethnic Chinese living in North Korea who divulged information about the Ryongchon area said, "It's known that Kim stopped for about an hour at Sinuiju Station and consulted with North Korean officials in his train... If one takes this into consideration, it's possible that his travel times were changed from those that were originally known."

About the cause of the accident, too, evidence to the contrary of official announcements is being raised. Another source in Dandong said, "Locals say this accident was caused by a dynamite explosion."

One South Korean businessman who works in Dandong said, "The various rumors that are running wild are evidence of the panicked public sentiment in the area affected by the disaster... The North Korean authorities must quickly accept relief aid from the international community and cope with public sentiment in the area."

(englishnews@chosun.com )
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Who let the dogs out?

So now you know. Thanks to prime-time television, you, the American people, understand that war is horrible. The mystery is why you didn't know before, why you are outraged now. Perhaps the answer is, if it's not on TV, it's not happening. So, credit to CBS's 60 Minutes II for finally showing part of the truth - that Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison have been undergoing the horrors of war at American hands. No credit to the US media for pulling the wool over your eyes about this war for so long. No credit to you for being appalled now - you should have known that this is what happens in any war, no matter whose side God is on.
Don't you remember the stark images in Life magazine of US soldiers torturing suspected communists during the Vietnam War? Have you forgotten about the My Lai massacre? Did you think the Disasters of War, as depicted by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya in 1810-11 (click here ) were things that only other countries perpetrated, in other times?

Did you think American wars are more civilized, more humane? Well, of course you did. Your president and your media, after the nonsense about weapons of mass destruction had been swept under the carpet, sold you this war as ridding the world of the brutal, bloodthirsty tyrant Saddam Hussein; as bringing the forces of humanity, civilization and enlightenment to a people living in darkness. And you believed that war could achieve this. Now, shocked, you are seeing images that show that the brutal, bloodthirsty tyrant's boot fits some American feet as well. Sorry, but war is dehumanizing.

Your president thunders that prisoner abuse "is not the American way". Maybe he really thinks so - he never saw service in Vietnam, or any other war, after all. Maybe his advisers just didn't tell him what really goes on in war. But to all but the simple-minded and the rose-bespectacled, this is not only the American way of war, it is the way of all sides in all wars.
The US media tell us this morning: "General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told US news channels that those responsible [for the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison] would be brought to justice and that the 'chain of command' would be investigated, as well as the six junior soldiers who face court-martial proceedings." Splendid. There is no doubt, however, that the "chain of command" investigation will not go all the way to the end of the chain. Underlings will take the fall in the US leaders' efforts to show that apart from a few misguided individuals, American soldiers are enlightened and humane killing, raping and torturing machines. An oxymoron? You bet. But you don't win wars by being gentle.
The underlings who will be punished are soldiers who were dragged along by the dogs of war. If you are shocked and appalled by what they did, it is those who let the dogs out who should be investigated. They have only one question to answer, and it is not "Did you order the maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners?" The question is, "Is this a just, necessary war?" If it is a just war, you may swallow your horror, because this is how wars are waged.
Sometimes war is unavoidable. Just don't be naive about it. Sorry to say, the grim reality is a whole lot worse than what you have recently seen on the "stupid box".
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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The dehumanizing nature of occupation
By Ehsan Ahrari

If the United States invaded Iraq to liberate its people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, recent reports of "systematic" inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners only underscore that the very nature of occupation of one country by another is such that it invariably leads to acts that dehumanize the occupied people in the name of security. The outcome: intense and incessant hostility, resentment, and anger of the occupied toward the occupiers.

New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh has written a gruesome account of gross and systematic abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Gharib prison. The ultimate irony is that, during the rule of Saddam, Abu Gharib became a symbol of brutality. Once it could not find weapons of mass destruction to justify its invasion of Iraq, the administration of US President George W Bush claimed that the liberation of Iraqis from the most inhumane rule of a dictator was a good enough reason for taking military action against that country. Now reports of the US military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners in that notorious prison threaten to deprive the United States of even that wobbly claim.

The seeds of prisoner abuse were sown in the very act of invasion and occupation of a country, especially when it was done without the moral authority of the international community. By going into Iraq without the sanction of the United Nations - the sole symbol of international legitimacy - the occupation forces became the target of Iraqi anger, particularly by not only remaining there indefinitely, but also by promising to transform Iraq into the image of their own society. Any expectation of overwhelming cooperation from the Iraqi populace was unrealistic. The manifestation of Iraqi anger through acts of resistance and insurgency was bound to create an equally brutal response from the occupying forces.

No occupying force can effectively respond to acts of insurgency, subversion and resistance without good intelligence. Therein lies the rub. Can the Anglo-American forces get credible information regarding potential hostile acts - known in the jargon of intelligence as "actionable intelligence" - without the use of force, including psychological means of torture and acts of humiliation regarded highly offensive in the Arab and Islamic culture? The answer, at least in the case of Abu Gharib prison, is that someone at the top made the decision to use whatever means desirable to get credible and actionable intelligence, or to look away and play innocent. Now the focus of inquiry ought to be whether such a decision, indeed, was made at the top. If so, how far up the chain of command does the notion of culpability go?

Bush has appropriately and promptly expressed his feeling of disgust at the reports of abuse. However, General Richard Meyer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quick to go on the defensive during an interview conducted on Fox Television Network on Sunday. He said: "There is no evidence of systematic abuse" in the US detention operations in the region. However, his claim was in direct contradiction with the one reported in Hersh's essay. Major-General Antonio M Taguba's report, which he wrote for the Pentagon, but was not meant for public release, cites numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Gharib. The Taguba report notes: "Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick; and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee."

The issue of culpability may be best pursued by closely examining the rationale - such as it was - for any abuse or dehumanizing treatment of Iraqi prisoners. At least for now, there are reasons to believe that the perpetrators of such acts were not merely some young soldiers from rural West Virginia or Oregon, acting on their own and without proper guidance, training, or supervision. Hersh reports: "In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Gharib. In a letter written in January, he said: 'I questioned some of the things that I saw ... such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell - and the answer I got was, "This is how military intelligence [MI] wants it done" ... MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days.' The military-intelligence officers have 'encouraged and told us, great job, they were now getting positive results and information,' Frederick wrote. The CIA has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI's request. At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th MP Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. His reply was. 'Don't worry about it.'"

If the preceding information is correct, then these events may not be swept under the rug merely by taking disciplinary action against a few soldiers, junior officers and one flag officer, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of military prisons in Iraq. One has to go to the top - all the way to Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, senior commander of US forces in Iraq. After all, he was the one who initially ordered Major-General Donald Ryder, provost marshal of the US Army, to review the Iraqi prison system. The Ryder report concluded that the "situation had not yet reached a crisis point". Why did General Sanchez decide against a further probe when he knew how damaging such incidents could be for the overall US prestige in the world?

We know now that the conclusion of the Ryder report was rejected by General Taguba when he stated in his report: "Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during [Ryder's] assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this investigation. In fact, many of the abuses suffered by detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment." He went on to add, according to Hersh: "Contrary to the findings of M G Ryder's report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade, were directed to change facility procedures to 'set the conditions' for MI interrogations." Army intelligence officers, CIA agents and private contractors "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses".

The Arab world has been saturated with the reports and pictures of the dehumanization of Iraqi prisoners. Admittedly, there is no comparison between the brutality of the Saddam regime and the reports of abuse of prisoners in occupied Iraq. However, as one dispatch in the latest issue of Newsweek aptly notes: "No one would liken US abuses to Saddam's techniques, which included the most sadistic forms of torture and murder. But then, being more humane than Saddam isn't much to brag about."

Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.

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

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Editor-in-chief of U.S.-funded Iraqi newspaper quits, complaining of American control
By Lee Keath, Associated Press, 5/3/2004 14:47
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) The head of a U.S.-funded Iraqi newspaper quit and said Monday he was taking almost his entire staff with him because of American interference in the publication.
On a front-page editorial of the Al-Sabah newspaper, editor-in-chief Ismail Zayer said he and his staff were ''celebrating the end of a nightmare we have suffered from for months ... We want independence. They (the Americans) refuse.''
Al-Sabah was set up by U.S. officials with funding from the Pentagon soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein last year. Since its first issue in July, many Iraqis have considered it the mouthpiece of the U.S.-led coalition, along with the U.S.-funded television station Al-Iraqiya.
Zayer said almost the entire staff left the paper along with him and that they were launching a new paper called Al-Sabah Al-Jedid (''The New Morning''), which would begin publishing Tuesday.
Zayer had sought to break Al-Sabah away from the Iraqi Media Network, which groups the paper, Al-Iraqiya and a number of radio station and is run by Harris Inc., a Florida-based communications company that won a $96 million Pentagon contract in January to develop the media.
''We informed (Zayer) that the paper would remain part of the IMN,'' said Tom Hausman of Harris' corporate communications. ''He made the decision to resign.''
Hausman said Al-Sabah would continue publishing on Tuesday with a new staff.
''We had a project to create a free media in Iraq,'' Zayer said of the founding of Al-Sabah. ''They are trying to control us. We are being suffocated.''

Zayer accused Harris of interfering in the paper's workings, including trying to stop some of its advertising and speaking to reporters about articles.
Among the ads that he said Harris tried to prevent was advertisement from a new political organization called ''the Iraqi Republican Group.'' The ad ran in Monday's issue the last put together by Zayer's staff.
The ad complained of the ''griefs of occupation'' and called on Iraqi elite to rally ''to preserve our nation from destruction.''
Zayer said he was told by Harris that the ad was ''too political.''
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Buyer's Remorse
Dems start to worry that Kerry can't win.

Monday, May 3, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

It's six months until the election, and Democrats are already having buyer's remorse. The Bush campaign "is kicking Kerry's ass every damn day," one prominent Democratic operative told the Washington Post last week. "Kerry hasn't owned one day in the news yet. Not one day!"
Some liberals are so frantic that they want to pull the plug. Village Voice columnist James Ridgeway says prominent Democrats should "sit down with the rich and arrogant presumptive nominee and try to persuade him to take a hike" and withdraw. Call that the Torricelli option, after the former New Jersey senator who was muscled out of the race by party elders.
That's not going to happen. First, John Forbes Kerry has wanted to be president ever since he hung around the Kennedy family compound as a teenager. He's not going to let any of the same pooh-bahs who only last December wrote him off as a primary contender drive him from the race now. Second, Mr. Kerry's convention delegates are loyal to him and not easily transferable. There was similar grumbling about dumping Bill Clinton in the summer of 1992 when he was running third in polls behind both George Bush and Ross Perot. Nothing came of it.
But that doesn't mean that the worries about John Kerry's electability are going away. Time magazine columnist Joe Klein says Mr. Kerry is "engulfed by the sort of people Howard Dean railed against: timid congressional Democratic staff members and some of the old Clinton crowd. . . . Kerry's may be the most sclerotic presidential campaign since Bob Dole's." Ouch.
Complaints about Mr. Kerry extend beyond his staff. John Weaver, who was strategist for John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign before he became a Democrat, calls Mr. Kerry's TV skills "abysmal. . . . I don't know if it's a stream of consciousness or stream of unconsciousness." MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who has lavished airtime on Mr. Kerry, is nonetheless frustrated with his elliptical speech patterns. "There's no such thing as a trick question with Kerry, because he won't answer it," he sighs. "We'll be having conversations afterward, and it's hard to get to him even then."
The few times that Mr. Kerry decides to abandon his nuanced reserve and programmed responses he can become argumentative and hectoring. ABC's Charlie Gibson asked him last Monday on "Good Morning America" to reconcile his inconsistent stories about whether he had flung his medals or merely his combat ribbons over the White House fence during a 1971 antiwar protest . After Mr. Gibson pointed out that he had covered the demonstration and had personally seen Mr. Kerry throwing medals away, the candidate replied: "Charlie, Charlie, you're wrong! That is not what happened. I threw my ribbons across. And all you have to do is go back and find the file footage." He then lapsed into incoherence.
Vaughn Ververs, the editor of the political newsletter Hotline, says Mr. Kerry's weak performances have led to "a good deal of hand-wringing among Democrats over the perception that one of Kerry's biggest strengths--his military service--seems to have become a liability."
One reason is that he began his presidential race talking far too much about Vietnam. My colleague James Taranto points out that in a December 2002 interview with NBC's Tim Russert, Mr. Kerry managed to work Vietnam into an answer about the death penalty. Robert Sam Anson, a Kerry friend who first met him during that same antiwar protest at which Mr. Kerry burst onto the national scene in 1971, concludes that Mr. Kerry is suffering from a desire to "explain away, deny, revise, trim or flat-out lie about all past events, beliefs and statements that got you the Democratic nomination in the first place. It happened to another friend of mine in 1972. His name was George McGovern. . . . See what happens when you ignore what Mother said about fibbing? No one's saying that Mr. Kerry's cooked. But McGovern parallels give him a toasted look he didn't get skiing in Sun Valley."
Liberals know they are stuck with Mr. Kerry, but that's not preventing them from worrying about his tendency to appear to take both sides of an issue. The irony is that Mr. Kerry has wanted the White House so badly, and for so long, that he has become almost a caricature of an opportunistic, programmed candidate. The resulting image turns off many voters who sense that not much is motivating him beyond blind ambition. For example, many voters may not feel comfortable with Mr. Bush's religious impulses and motivations, but they highlight the image he conveys of a sincere, committed leader.
It is traditional for party activists to grumble about their prospective nominee between the time he wraps up the primaries and when he is actually nominated. But the doubts about Mr. Kerry go beyond campaign kvetching. At times, they seem to verge on quiet panic.
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CACI Wants to Review Report on Alleged Abuse


By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 4, 2004; Page A18


CACI International Inc. said yesterday that an outside law firm will conduct its investigation of its employees' conduct in Iraq and review its operations around the world.
The Arlington defense contractor's chairman, meanwhile, complained that the government hasn't allowed the company to see an internal Army report that, according to portions made available to The Washington Post, says two CACI employees, along with two military intelligence officials, were "either directly or indirectly responsible" for abuses of prisoners allegedly committed by soldiers at Abu Ghraib detention facility outside Baghdad.
Details of the report were published previously in the New Yorker, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
"There are things flying around . . . and I'm sitting here having not seen anything from the government," J.P. "Jack" London, the company's chairman and chief executive, said yesterday. The government, he said, has not told the company its employees are accused of wrongdoing. The company has confirmed some employees were interviewed by the Army.
CACI said yesterday it has never employed one of the two men named in the report, but it declined to say which one.
Six soldiers have been charged with physical and sexual abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Seven others will be reprimanded, Army officials announced yesterday.
Pictures of the alleged mistreatment, aired on television and printed in newspapers around the world, have shocked people and inflamed Arab countries.
The law firm hired by CACI, which it declined to identify, "has competence with these types of matters," London said. "Frankly, we want to make sure that there isn't something going on that we were not aware of. We don't have any intent to support illegal behavior by our employees, if there is any."
CACI provides services such as engineering and integrating computer systems for government clients, including the Department of Defense, where it gets the bulk of its revenue.
Lawyers for some of the soldiers charged with abuse said CACI employees acted as interrogators at the prison. The company has declined to say how many people it has in Iraq or to describe their work, but it has posted ads seeking interrogators, intelligence analysts and counterintelligence agents on several Internet job boards.
"This particular type of work is something we've been performing for several years, this intelligence-gathering," London said. Asked how the company trains employees to conduct interrogations, London said CACI recruits "people who have these competencies and have demonstrated those capabilities." Many of them, he said, have previous military experience.
Military use of private contractors has escalated rapidly in the past 15 years, said Deborah Avant, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University who has studied the practice. Private companies have traditionally been hired to provide services such as food preparation and logistical support but more recently have been used for more demanding jobs such as providing security for U.S. officials.
Until now, though, Avant said, she was not "aware of a situation where the U.S. military has outsourced interrogation."
Employees of San Diego-based Titan Corp., which employed translators at Abu Ghraib, are also involved in the investigation, U.S. investigators have said. According to the New Yorker, the Army report quotes a Titan employee who witnessed the abuse.
A company spokesman, Wil Williams, said he did not know whether Titan was involved in the investigation. "I know of no allegations against Titan or any of its employees," he said.

Staff writers Sewell Chan in Baghdad and Renae Merle in Washington contributed to this report.



? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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CBS Delayed Abuse Report At the Request Of Gen. Myers
Associated Press
Tuesday, May 4, 2004; Page A18


NEW YORK, May 3 -- CBS News delayed for two weeks airing a report about U.S. soldiers' alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners, following a personal request from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Gen. Richard B. Myers called CBS anchor Dan Rather eight days before the report was to air, asking for extra time, said Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes II."
Myers cited the safety of Americans held hostage and tension surrounding the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Fager said, adding that he held off as long as he believed possible given it was a competitive story.
With the New Yorker magazine preparing to run a detailed report on the alleged abuses, CBS broadcast its report last Wednesday, including images taken last year allegedly showing Iraqis stripped naked, hooded and being tormented by U.S. captors at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
Fager said he felt "terrible" being asked to delay the broadcast.
"News is a delicate thing," he said. "It's hard to just make those kinds of decisions. It's not natural for us; the natural thing is to put it on the air. But the circumstances were quite unusual, and I think you have to consider that."
Rather revealed the two-week delay in a postscript to viewers at the end of Wednesday's broadcast.
Fager said he believed the story was better because of the delay; CBS was able to interview Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt about the alleged incidents because the network waited.
Myers, speaking on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, confirmed that he asked CBS for the delay. "You can't keep this out of the news, clearly," he said. "But I thought it would be particularly inflammatory at the time."



? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Intelligence Reform Will Not Be Quick
Many Groups to Weigh In on Changes

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 4, 2004; Page A23

The White House, Congress and two independent commissions are discussing wholesale reform of the nation's intelligence community in the wake of its failures to detect the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and accurately describe Iraq's weapons programs, mistakes that were highlighted in recent public hearings.
But despite warnings from some members of the national commission investigating the terrorist attacks that they will soon recommend intelligence reform, many government officials say it will be at least a year until any substantive change is realized.
None of the panels has completed its work, and any recommendations for substantial change will be politically controversial, particularly if they involve control of the Pentagon's intelligence programs, which account for the vast majority of U.S. intelligence spending. The large number of agencies and congressional committees with vested interests in the current intelligence structure guarantees that change will be difficult, as past commissions recommending reforms can attest.
Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which last month released a critique of intelligence failures before the attacks, describes reform of the intelligence community as a major focus of the panel's report to be delivered July 26. "It could possibly be our most important recommendation," Kean said recently, "but I don't think any of us can honestly say what that recommendation will be yet."
The Senate and House intelligence panels also will be making their own recommendations over the next few months based on separate inquiries into the failure of prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. Appeals Court Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman, co-chairman of President Bush's Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, said recently that his newly formed group has just begun its inquiry into the Iraq failure and some intelligence successes, such as Libya. There, U.S. and British knowledge of Moammar Gaddafi's programs forced the Libyan leader to cooperate in destroying his weapons and stockpiles. Silberman's panel reports next March.
"We want to hear from all our commissions," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the president's National Security Council, "but we are not ruling out any idea that could immediately provide protection to the American people."
Even CIA Director George J. Tenet has said there could be other ways for the intelligence community to be organized, but veterans of previous attempts at reform are urging caution. They are particularly concerned about one proposal that appears to be gaining popularity: creating a new director of national intelligence separate from the CIA and other intelligence agencies, but with overall budgetary and operational authority over the entire intelligence apparatus.
Tenet is the director of central intelligence (DCI) as well as CIA director. In the DCI role, he has only secondary control over the budgets of Pentagon-based agencies that receive nearly 90 percent of the intelligence community's roughly $40 billion annual budget. His relationship with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld determines how much influence he has over the use of the Pentagon's intelligence assets.
Proponents of a single director of central intelligence believe putting one official in charge of all intelligence agencies, including the Defense Department's, would make the collection and dissemination of information more efficient.
Kean said his commission is looking at the idea, but neither he nor other members of the panel have reached any conclusions. A similar idea, proposed more than a year ago by retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), has recently received attention inside the administration and on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), ranking minority member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and other committee Democrats have proposed establishing a national director of intelligence (NDI) who would have overall operational and budgetary control over Defense Department intelligence agencies, which would remain in the Pentagon. The new NDI would have the same relationship with the CIA, without the direct administrative responsibilities.
Harman said recently she is pushing for action before November and has made a presentation to members of Kean's commission. "The DCI concept should have changed when the Cold War ended," Harman said. "Lacking budgetary authority, the DCI ends up being an advocate rather than a disinterested broker."
Most reformers forget how complicated it can be to change the intelligence community, said L. Britt Snider, who for 25 years has worked on intelligence issues in senior posts on Capitol Hill, at the Defense Department and at the CIA. The intelligence system is woven through numerous agencies, and officials report to at least 12 congressional committees, each with entrenched interests in the current structure.
"This is the first time a president has indicated a possible interest," Snider said. Reform "has not had that in the past, and nothing will happen without the president aboard and taking an interest."
But he warned that "the interests of the Defense Department have to be understood." The Pentagon handles more than 90 percent of the money spent on intelligence because protection of troops is the primary concern in the allocation of funds. In the past, Snider said, legislators, particularly on the House and Senate Armed Services committees, "were afraid of making changes that could harm military forces in deployed situations." Devoting more intelligence resources to terrorism, he added, could reduce intelligence gathering on other threats.
Former senator Warren Rudman (R-N.H.), who participated in several past reform attempts and served for many years as chairman of the PFIAB, said some quick efforts at reform have left the intelligence community "worse than we were in the first place." He said he was concerned about "creating massive new structures for politically expedient reasons."
Tenet has argued against a national director of intelligence, saying initially that the creation of that post would add another layer to the bureaucracy. "Rather than focus on a zero-sum game of authorities, the focus should be on ensuring that the DCI and the secretary of defense work together on investments tied to mission," he told Kean's panel.
He believes the "way into the future" is a system under which the intelligence community functions through new combined entities. In one recent example, intelligence officials from the Pentagon, FBI and other agencies were brought to work at the new Terrorist Threat Integration Center. "That's the way we are moving," he said.
Tenet feels strongly about rebuilding human intelligence capabilities and the need to be able to carry out covert operations against terrorists. But he said he believes the president's chief intelligence officer must be directly involved in the CIA's covert activities, each of which must be approved by the president. As CIA director and, earlier, as the top staff member of the Senate intelligence committee, Tenet has seen firsthand the political fallout from the failure of such activities.
"If you separate the DCI from troops, from [agency] operators and analysts, I have a concern about his or her effectiveness, his or her connection," he said.



? 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Turkey Charges 9 In Plot to Bomb NATO Summit
Associated Press
Tuesday, May 4, 2004; Page A21


ANKARA, Turkey, May 3 -- A Turkish court on Monday charged nine suspects in an alleged plot to set off a bomb at a NATO summit in Istanbul next month that President Bush is scheduled to attend.
Authorities in the northwestern province of Bursa on Thursday detained 16 alleged members of Ansar al-Islam, a Turkish group allegedly linked to al Qaeda, Gov. Oguz Kagan Koksal said. The suspects also planned to attack a synagogue in Bursa and rob a bank, Koksal said.
A Turkish court that deals with terrorism cases charged nine of the detainees with "membership in an illegal organization." They also could face other charges.
Prosecutors questioned and released the other seven suspects, as well as nine others who were questioned in Istanbul, officials said.
The leader of Ansar al-Islam, identified as Alpaslan Toprak, was among those detained, Koksal said. Police also seized equipment to make remote-controlled bombs, guns, books on bomb-making, forged identity documents and CDs that served as training manuals, he said.
The crackdown on the group comes amid heightened security before the June 28-29 meeting of NATO leaders in Istanbul. In November, more than 60 people were killed in the bombings of two synagogues, a London-based bank and the British Consulate in Istanbul that authorities blamed on suspected members of an al Qaeda cell in Turkey. Officials have charged 69 suspects in those attacks.
An Islamic group based in northern Iraq that also calls itself Ansar al-Islam and is believed to be linked to al Qaeda, asserted responsibility for suicide bombings on Feb. 1 against the offices of two Kurdish political parties in northern Iraq that killed more than 100 people. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Turkish and Iraqi groups shared "the same ideology and tactics." The Turkish group has grown in size since the U.S.-led war in Iraq, the official said.



? 2004 The Washington Post Company

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U.N. Warns of Delay in Iraqi Election
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 4, 2004; Page A19


UNITED NATIONS, May 3 -- National elections in Iraq scheduled for January could be postponed unless security there improves, the top election official for the United Nations said Monday.
"If the security situation does not improve, one of the things that is clear is that the U.N. won't participate in Mickey Mouse elections," Carina Perelli, the director of the U.N.'s electoral assistance division, told reporters in New York. "Elections under the gun," she said, do not go "hand in hand."
Perelli said that despite the ongoing violence in Iraq, technical preparations for elections are advancing faster than expected. The United Nations will establish an independent electoral commission by the end of the month after negotiating a new electoral law ahead of schedule. "Security aside, right now we are better than on track," she said.
Perelli, a Uruguayan election specialist who recently concluded a three-week visit to Iraq, said the United Nations will soon return to Iraq to work out a series of unresolved issues, including whether Iraq will be governed by a presidential or parliamentary political system.
The United Nations is trying to create a new electoral system from scratch in Iraq, a country that has little experience with democracy. In February, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that he could help organize elections in Iraq by the end of the year if Iraqis reached agreement on a new electoral law by May. That would provide U.N. and Iraqi officials with a minimum of eight months to prepare for elections.
As a first step, the United Nations has invited individuals from across Iraq's political, religious and tribal spectrums to vie for a few positions on the electoral commission. U.N.-appointed officials will narrow the field of candidates to 20 individuals and select an executive director general of elections and seven-member board of commissioners from the group. The United Nations will also appoint an international election commissioner to advise Iraq's electoral commissioners.
Perelli said that aspirants can obtain entry forms at any of 13 regional coalition sites throughout the country until May 15. She said that although coalition sites in five of Iraq's 18 governates were too dangerous to distribute the forms, contenders could get copies of the form on the Internet or travel to another site to obtain one.
U.S. occupation authorities have appropriated as much as $260 million to finance the elections, Perelli said. But she said the cost could rise if Iraqis living outside the country are allowed to vote.
In an effort to ensure their competence and independence, candidates for the electoral posts will be questioned by a panel of three international election specialists and required to sign a paper renouncing participation in politics as long as they serve on the commission. They will have to accept a "curtailment of the exercise of their civil and political rights," she said. They will be the "enforcers of the legitimacy of the process," she added.
Perelli said the United Nations would try to avoid selecting commissioners based on their political, tribal or religious affiliation. That is a major departure from the U.S.-led occupation authorities, who apportioned political seats on the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council on the basis of affiliation.
The process has done little to strengthen the standing of politicians and political parties, which are viewed favorably by only 3 percent of the Iraqi population, according to a local poll cited by Perelli. "The anti-political party feelings of the population is extremely high," she said.
The decision has fueled anxiety by Iraq's factions that they may be left out if they do not aggressively promote their own causes. "There is a concern right now in terms of the different groups feeling that it is now or never" or they could be left out of Iraq's political future, she said.



? 2004 The Washington Post Company