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Cornering the "Biggest Evil"
Papers predict the imminent capture of Osama Bin Laden.
By Michael Young
Posted Monday, Feb. 23, 2004, at 9:13 AM PT


A day after yet another suicide attack in Israel, many newspapers predictably led with the hearings that began today at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the legality of Israel's separation wall in the occupied Palestinian territories. However, another weekend story was developing, despite the absence of any confirmation, namely a report that Osama Bin Laden had been spotted and surrounded in tribal portions of Pakistan.

The first newspaper to highlight the Bin Laden story was Britain's Sunday Express, which reported that the al-Qaida leader had been found and surrounded by U.S. forces in a border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to a report on the Express story by Australia's Sunday Telegraph, the British tabloid, "known for its sometimes colorful scoops," claimed Bin Laden "is in a mountainous area to the north of the Pakistani city of Quetta. The region is said to be peopled with bin Laden supporters and the terrorist leader is estimated to also have 50 of his fanatical bodyguards with him. ... The claim is attributed to 'a well-placed intelligence source' in Washington, who is quoted as saying: '[Bin Laden] is boxed in.' " A subsequent story on the Express Web site qualified the initial report. The paper noted:

New operations aimed at cornering al-Qaeda and Taliban holdouts sheltering in the Pakistani tribal belt where Osama bin Laden may be hiding are soon to get under way. ... Bin Laden was not the immediate target of the operation, said one senior Pakistani intelligence official. But he said the hope was that the operation would net clues that would ultimately lead to the "biggest evil."

The Arabic press also picked up on the story. On Monday, the London-based Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat put a story on its front page under this neutral headline, "There Are Reports of Al-Qaida Leaders Being Surrounded." The story cited a U.S. Defense Department spokesman neither confirming nor denying Bin Laden's "location and whether he had been surrounded." The paper went on to say, much like the Express, that reports suggested "thousands of Pakistani troops" were preparing to attack border areas in Waziristan, near Afghanistan, "in the event of a refusal by the tribes [living in the areas] to hand over members of al-Qaida." Al-Hayat, another London-based Saudi newspaper, put the same story on its front page, noting that 8,000 Pakistani troops would join 4,000 others already in Waziristan, with the aim of capturing Bin Laden and former Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Pakistan's Dawn quoted the country's information and broadcasting minister, Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, denying the Express story. According to the story, "[Ahmad] said the army had not started any operation. It [had] only strengthened its force to secure the borders of the country." However, it was fairly clear from the article that the minister was keen to avoid a sense that Pakistan was collaborating with foreign forces against his country's tribesmen: "Neither [Pakistani forces] will join any other country's force nor any other country's force will join them," he said.

In the more sedate surroundings of The Hague, the U. N. International Court of Justice was set to begin hearings on the legality of Israel's West Bank separation wall. Israel has protested the hearings, arguing that the wall is necessary for Israeli security, and will not be participating in the ICJ hearings in an official capacity.

The start of the hearings came a day after a suicide bombing killed eight people in a bus in Jerusalem. Reporting on the attack, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz noted that two guards had entered the bus but had been unable to spot the attacker, a 23-year-old man from a village near Bethlehem. Several officials linked the bombing to the ICJ proceedings, and the Jerusalem police chief, Maj. Gen. Mickey Levy, recognized this when he said, "There were no specific warnings about [the attack]; but because of the trial about the fence, this is a problematic week, and the preparations were in keeping with this."

As the ICJ hearings got underway, the Palestinian delegate was the first witness. According to the English-language Web site of Israel's Maariv: "Palestinian UN representative, Nasser al-Kidwa, was the first the address the court. In a scathing attack on Israel, al-Kidwa said: 'The wall will render the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict impossible.' " Kidwa was referring to the fact that Palestinians, and indeed many others, see the wall as an Israeli instrument for the de facto annexation of large swathes of Palestinian land in the West Bank. To get a sense of just what is at stake in terms of size, Al-Hayat published an almost-page-sized map of the West Bank showing the contours of the wall in its Monday's edition. Whatever the wall's final path, many people, even Palestinians, will agree the bus attack did little to advance Palestinian arguments on the need to tear down the barrier.


Michael Young is opinion editor at the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.

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Unhip, Unhip Al Hurra
The Middle East hates its new TV station.
By Ed Finn
Posted Friday, Feb. 20, 2004, at 9:18 AM PT


In its first week of broadcasting to the Middle East, U.S.-funded satellite station Al Hurra has earned little praise from its target audience. Al Hurra (which means "the free one" in Arabic) started broadcasting Valentine's Day as a none-too-subtle answer to Al Jazeera and other regional media's unfavorable reporting on U.S. foreign policy.

Al Hurra is just the latest in a string of Middle Eastern public diplomacy efforts for the United States--previous highlights include the Arab-language Radio Sawa and Hi magazine. The station kicked off its programming with an exclusive interview with President Bush and offers a mix of international news, documentaries, and talk shows.

Many Arab commentators were quick to condemn Al Hurra, some even before it aired. Writing last week, Rami Khouri of Lebanon's Daily Star threw down the gauntlet: Al Hurra "will be an entertaining, expensive and irrelevant hoax. Where do they get this stuff from? Why do they keep insulting us like this?" Syria's Tishrin skipped bafflement and moved directly to outrage: "This station is part of a project to recolonize the Arab homeland that the United States seeks to implement through a carrot-and-stick policy." (Translation courtesy of BBC Monitoring.)

A few contrarians did speak up to defend the network's arrival, though they did so out of principle rather than any love of its message. Britain's Guardian quoted an Egyptian news executive arguing: "Everyone is entitled to express his or her opinion. This is an open sky and nobody should be afraid of that." The London-based Arab paper Al-Sharq al-Awsat pooh-poohed those who saw the channel as "an American plot to 'brainwash' the Arabs" and argued that "a nation scared of a satellite station, regardless of its source or color, is a shy and timid nation."

The problem, everyone agreed, was not the station's programming but rather U.S. policies, especially regarding Israel. The Guardian interviewed Cairo natives about the new show, and reported: "[M]ost Cairenes said they simply do not trust Bush. If he cared about human rights, then he would help the Palestinians, they say." Al-Khaleej of the United Arab Emirates noted, "If U.S. policy in the region was sound and convincing, they would not resort to cosmetic means to improve their image" (Arabic translation in the last two paragraphs courtesy of BBC Monitoring.)

Middle Eastern papers were nearly unanimous in arguing that American support of Israel and its occupation of Iraq are the issues that fuel anti-American sentiment--and Al Hurra can do little to disguise this. The Jordan Times put it in terms even an American could understand:

No amount of sweet words and pretty pictures will change the reality of an Israeli occupation, soon in its 37th year, or the chaos in Iraq, both of which can be directly attributed to American policy. No one here is going to be convinced of America's benign intentions as long as these issues remain unresolved. It all seems so obvious, at least to most of the people of this region, that, to borrow the phrase of an American cultural icon, "doh!"

Ed Finn is a writer in New York. You can e-mail him at ed@edfinn.net.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2095806/

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THE RIGHT'S PHONY OUTRAGE OVER DEFICITS.
Crocodile Tears
by Jonathan Chait


Printer friendly
Post date 02.23.04 | Issue date 03.01.04 E-mail this article

o trace the Republican Party's evolving view of the deficit during the Bush years, one need only turn to the editorials of The Wall Street Journal. In the spring of 2001, before the enactment of President Bush's first tax cut, the Journal editors were still floating in the Pollyannaish world of ever-growing surpluses. "Even if Congress passes Mr. Bush's entire tax cut," an April editorial pronounced, "federal debt will fall to an estimated 14.4% of GDP by fiscal 2006. In other words, federal debt is not even remotely a problem." A month earlier, when Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle warned that Bush's tax cuts would "consume nearly all the surplus," the Journal replied, "The truth is that if instead of $5.6 trillion, the surplus were $56 trillion, Senator Daschle and the like would still be yammering about 'irresponsible' tax cuts."

Even after the surplus disappeared, the Journal remained sanguine. In February 2002, the editors observed, "Another Beltway lament is that the Bush tax cuts have sent the budget into deficit. ... But total revenues are projected to rebound smartly in 2003." When, rather than rebound, revenue fell again in 2003, the Journal was still undeterred. "The new antitax argument is to lament 'a decade of deficits' to come," insisted a March 2003 editorial. "This ignores the fact that the U.S. debt in public hands remains about 36% of GDP." Nine days later, another editorial sneered, "Yes, we know, there is the 'deficit.'" (The sarcastic quotation marks are a particularly amusing touch, as if to say, "Oh, riiight, the budget's in 'deficit.' Whatever you say, Daschle.")

In the last few weeks, however, Journal readers may have detected a faint note of concern. Tucked into one of its perennial jeremiads against congressional profligacy, a January 20 editorial worried that "the ostensibly small-government GOP seems totally oblivious to the fact that all this spending puts its future economic agenda in jeopardy. Appropriations do mean taxes, after all, even if they're deferred taxes." For those who don't follow this debate closely, "deferred taxes" is a euphemism for deficits. The Journal is finally acknowledging that, with the budget a half-trillion dollars in the red, the baby-boomers about to retire, and no sign of relief on the horizon, the country may have a wee fiscal problem on its hands.

The Journal lays the blame for this state of affairs on out-of-control domestic spending. Recent editorials have denounced "drunken GOP sailors" and threatened "a conservative revolt over runaway spending." And, indeed, these sentiments reflect pretty well the position of the conservative movement more generally. "As 2003 closes, the nation finds itself burdened by runaway federal spending and massive looming structural budget deficits," argued an oft-cited paper by the Heritage Foundation released last December. "Republicans are swiftly forfeiting the perception that they are especially responsible stewards of government finances," complained columnist George Will. Indeed, in the last few weeks, all the arms of the conservative intellectual apparatus--National Review, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh, the Cato Institute, the Club for Growth, and sundry right-wing talk-show hosts--have flayed the administration and congressional Republicans for their profligacy. Meanwhile, conservatives in Congress have vowed to slash Bush's latest budget request.

And so, in a relatively short span of time, the conservative view of the deficit has gone from myopic denial to borderline hysteria. It is a sign of genuine progress that Bush's allies finally admit that vast, structural deficits pose a threat to the continued health of the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, they have misdiagnosed the nature of that threat, which is posed by tax cuts and national security spending, which they support, not by domestic spending. The conservative uprising may seem like bracing intellectual honesty, but in fact it's an attempt to deflect attention away from the fact that the policies they champion have failed even on their own terms.



he anti-spending backlash has gained such traction--even some liberals are buying into it--because it contains a few grains of truth. First, spending has risen noticeably. The catch is that it has risen from historically low levels. In each of the last three fiscal years of the Clinton administration, federal spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) reached no higher than 18.6 percent--lower than at any point since 1966. Today, at just over 20 percent of GDP, outlays are higher, but they're still not terribly high by post-Great Society standards. In fact, in 2004, Washington will still consume a lower share of the economy than it did during any year between 1975 and 1996.

Second, it's also true that Republicans have embraced spending programs that would make Milton Friedman turn over in his University of Chicago office. According to Congressional Quarterly, after Republicans took control of Congress, they "embraced the practice of earmarking"--the term of art for circumventing the normal appropriations practice to slip in hometown projects--"taking it to a degree unimagined when the Republican revolutionaries of 1994 prepared to storm the capitol." But, while pork-barrel spending may be a powerful symbol of GOP hypocrisy, it's not a terribly large part of the $2.4 trillion federal budget. Likewise, some of Bush's spending initiatives have attracted attention disproportionate to their size. Bush made an enormous fuss over his commitment to increase education spending, but education still accounts for a mere 2.76 percent of the budget. Conservatives are rightly upset about his funding increase for the National Endowment for the Arts, but, however shaky arts subsidies may be in principle, their $18 million cost is peanuts. Even the farm bill, at $180 billion over ten years, is, again, notable more for its hypocritical pandering--Bush revived an archaic and unjustifiable subsidy that Bill Clinton had phased out--than its scale.



ather, the most expensive spending programs under Bush have been for defense, homeland security, and international aid. None of these areas has grown fat. To the contrary, the military is overstretched, homeland security underfunded, and aid programs to build strong governments and civil societies that can resist radical Islam woefully inadequate. Still, if you add up the cost of all the legislation enacted since Bush took office--as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities did--these three areas account for 30 percent of that cost. New entitlements account for 13 percent, and, with the Medicare benefit projected to grow, that share will increase over time. But, rather than tackle these areas of spending--or address the elephant in the living room, the president's tax cuts, which account for 55 percent of the "cost" of legislation under Bush (more on this later)--conservatives have focused the brunt of their fiscal wrath upon a relatively small and innocuous slice of the federal budget called domestic discretionary spending.

Discretionary spending includes everything the government does other than entitlements, defense, and interest on the national debt. All of this--from national highways to scientific research to public housing--accounts for a mere 17 percent of the overall budget. It makes up a still smaller 3 percent of the total cost of legislation passed under Bush, and its impact on the budget pales beside the tax cuts. But, because many of these programs lack strong political constituencies--at least when compared with heavyweights like Medicare--they are taking the brunt of the conservative attack. Heritage paints the growth in discretionary spending as insidious: "[N]on-defense discretionary spending," argues its December backgrounder, "has reached 3.9 percent of GDP ($3,900 per household) for the first time in nearly 20 years." But most of that increase has come from homeland security. The Center for American Progress found that, over the last decade, domestic programs unrelated to security have grown from 3.3 percent of GDP to--da-dum!--3.4 percent of GDP.

Trying to balance the budget by squeezing domestic discretionary spending is like trying to lose weight by giving up that slice of tomato on your cheeseburger. Not that Republicans aren't trying anyway: GOP leaders have proposed a total freeze on discretionary spending this year. Doing so would save $2 billion. To grasp the absurdity of that effort, keep in mind that this year's deficit is expected to top $500 billion. Even if Congress persuaded Bush to completely eliminate all discretionary programs including homeland security, that would still leave Washington with $137 billion in red ink.

The big picture, then, is this: Overall spending has crept up a bit, now taking up 1.6 percent more of the economy than it did when Bush took office, but it remains modest by modern standards. The really spectacular change is in tax revenue, which has fallen from 20.9 percent to 15.8 percent of GDP since Bush took office. The collapse in revenue, in other words, has been more than three times the growth in spending. This year, revenue will account for a smaller share of the economy than in any year since 1950. Now, it's true that much of that revenue loss stems from broader economic factors, not just tax cuts. But, even if you look only at deficit increases caused directly by legislative action, the cost of the tax cuts is still nearly five times the size of all the non-security spending increases and accounts for more than all new spending (defense, homeland security, and domestic) put together.



hy, then, do conservatives fixate on the role of spending in producing the deficit? For one thing, doing so allows them to pressure the Bush administration and Congress to squeeze spending, which is what they want to do anyway. More important, it allows them to avoid acknowledging that they were (and continue to be) spectacularly wrong about the fiscal impact of the Bush tax cuts.

Recall for a moment that, when asked why it made sense to address a temporary economic slowdown by opening a permanent drain on federal revenue, conservatives offered up two fiscal defenses. The first was the basic supply-side claim that, by unleashing new incentives, the tax cuts would permanently raise economic growth, which in turn would create additional tax revenue. Therefore, they concluded, the tax cut would cost the government far less than official projections suggested. Heritage fellow Daniel Mitchell asserted in 2001 that "tax cuts will not result in nearly as much foregone revenue as static forecasts suggests [sic]." That same year, Journal editorials touted claims by the American Enterprise Institute's John Makin and Harvard University's Martin Feldstein that Bush's tax cuts would in fact "yield a net revenue loss of only 65% of the officially estimated $1.6 trillion costs." So far, of course, revenue has dropped far, far more than official estimates forecasted. (Which should not come as a surprise: In 1993, those same supply-siders argued that Clinton's tax hike would cause revenue to grow far less than official projections held, or perhaps even to decline, and instead they skyrocketed. It's as if the economic gods delight in humiliating the supply-siders.)

The second, and more popular, justification for tax cuts was that, by draining revenue from Washington, they would keep a lid on spending. Curiously enough, some of the people who endorsed this argument were the same ones who insisted tax cuts wouldn't actually drain much revenue. (As the Journal editorialized in January 2001, "[T]here is also a devastating political argument against using the surplus to pay down the debt. There won't be any. Congress has demonstrated, again and again, it cannot control itself when there is money to be spent.") But this argument had its greatest appeal to those conservatives not inclined to accept supply-side fantasies. Writing in these pages three years ago, my colleague Andrew Sullivan argued, "[I]f there is one thing we have learned in the past 20 years, it's that controlling government spending is simply impossible without deficits" ("Downsize," May 14, 2001). He also predicted, "One of the tax cut's effects will surely be that the United States won't be able to afford a vastly expanded Medicare drug benefit." Oops.

Today, the very same conservatives who insisted tax cuts were necessary to hold down spending now concede that Bush has increased spending at a faster rate than Clinton. None of them have admitted it, but their theory has failed. Though Republicans control all branches of government, there is still no political will for significant spending cuts. (Remember, the most draconian proposal by House conservatives would reduce the half-trillion-dollar deficit by $2 billion, or 0.4 percent.) The only question, then, is whether we should pay for the current level of spending or make future generations pay for it, with interest.



he great fallacy of the starve-the-beast theory of tax cuts is that it assumes Washington will spend whatever it can afford, and no more. There is no empirical evidence to support his claim. The best study of this, in fact, suggests just the opposite. In 2002, Richard Kogan, an analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, examined federal budgets since 1976. He found that when revenue rises, spending tends to fall, and, when revenue falls, spending tends to rise. (Economy geeks take note: He also found that this strong correlation held even if you control for the state of the economy.)

Just look at recent history. Washington tends to restrain spending when there is bipartisan agreement on the need for fiscal responsibility. When you remove the restraints on one side of the equation--taxes or spending--you tend to lose the restraints on the other side, too. Since Bush only got his initial tax cuts by dismissing debt reduction and then pooh-poohing deficits as small and temporary, no wonder there wasn't any public demand for taking a chainsaw to the federal budget. It's true that Congress cut back on domestic spending during Ronald Reagan's presidency, but it did so only after Reagan canceled some of his own tax cuts and raised other taxes in 1982 and 1983. Two of the most successful efforts to restrain spending--in 1990 under George H. W. Bush and in 1993 under Clinton--both combined tax hikes with limits on spending. These two episodes, plus the 1995 showdown with Newt Gingrich, all proved the same thing: You can get voters to accept spending restraint for the purpose of shared goals like restoring national solvency, but not for partisan goals like giving the rich a tax cut.

If you really want to reduce the size of government, you have to reduce entitlement spending. Conservatives may hope that, if they drive the country close enough to insolvency, they will one day force the public to swallow otherwise unacceptable cuts in Medicare and Social Security. But this is a pipe dream. Public support for these entitlement programs is so strong that voters will always find alternatives. If it comes down to a choice between slashing Social Security and raising taxes, polls have always shown, voters prefer to raise taxes. Indeed, the only way Republicans ever get tax cuts enacted is by insisting that popular entitlements won't be touched and dismissing any suggestion to the contrary as partisan demagoguery.

Ultimately, conservatives may have been seduced by the success of Bush's dishonesty. Bush won approval for his tax cut by convincing Americans it wouldn't come at the expense of priorities they valued more. As Sullivan bluntly confessed in his 2001 column endorsing the tax cut, "The fact that Bush has to obfuscate his real goals of reducing spending with the smoke screen of 'compassionate conservatism' shows how uphill the struggle is. Yes, some of the time he is full of it on his economic policies. But a certain amount of B.S. is necessary for any vaguely successful retrenchment of government power in an insatiable entitlement state." The public, in other words, needed to be fooled into supporting the tax cuts. The first round of fooling, about the extent to which the tax cuts would go to the wealthy at the expense of more popular priorities, went well enough--but, then, most voters don't know how much money their boss saved on taxes. They do know, however, how much their mothers' Social Security checks are worth, which is why the second round of fooling--i.e., getting them to sign off on substantial spending cuts--isn't likely to go anywhere. The simple fact is that, in the long run, conservatives can't affect their hoped-for "retrenchment of government power" without obtaining the consent of the public. What they can do is dig the country into a deep fiscal hole trying.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at TNR.

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>> ECONOMIST...

Trade and employment

The new jobs migration

Feb 19th 2004
From The Economist print edition


Foreign competition now affects services as well as manufacturing. Good






FOR the past 250 years, politicians and hard-headed men of business have diligently ignored what economics has to say about the gains from trade--much as they may pretend, or in some cases even believe, that they are paying close attention. Except for those on the hard left, politicians of every ideological stripe these days swear their allegiance to the basic principle of free trade. Businessmen say the same. So when either group issues its calls for barriers against foreign competition, it is never because free trade is wrong in principle, it is because foreigners are cheating somehow, rendering the principles void. Or else it is because something about the way the world works has changed, so that the basic principles, ever valid in themselves, need to be adjusted. And those adjustments, of course, then oblige these staunch defenders of free-trade-in-principle to call for all manner of restrictions on trade.

In this way, protectionism is periodically refreshed and reinvented. Anti-trade sentiment, especially in the United States, is currently having one of its strongest revivals in years. Earlier bogus "new conditions" that were deemed to undermine the orthodox case for liberal trade included the growth of cross-border capital flows, the recognition that some industries exposed to foreign competition may have strategic or network significance for the wider economy, and concerns over exploitation of workers in developing countries. Today's bogus new condition, which is proving far more potent in political terms than any of these others, is the fact that international competition is now impinging on industries previously sheltered from it by the constraints of technology and geography.
The new protectionism
It is no longer just manufacturing that is feeling the pressure of foreign competition. It is no longer just dirty blue-collar jobs that are moving offshore. Jobs in services are now migrating as well, some of them requiring advanced skills, notably in computer programming. Services constitute much the larger part of every advanced economy. At the end of this process, what will be left? Gosh, Adam Smith never thought of this. Trade policy needs to be completely rethought.

Well, actually, no. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out recently that if services can be sourced more cheaply overseas than at home, it is to America's advantage to seize that opportunity. This simple restatement of the logic of liberal trade brought derision down on Mr Mankiw's head--and the supposedly pro-trade administration he works for conspicuously failed to defend the plain truth he had advanced. That was disturbing.

John Kerry, who leads the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, is at best a tepid and fluctuating proponent of trade, given to calling bosses who invest overseas "Benedict Arnolds". His main competitor, the beguiling John Edwards, who did unexpectedly well in the Wisconsin primary this week, has fastened on trade as his winning issue: he is for clenching his jaw and keeping American jobs in America, etc. And the media are simply lapping it up. CNN's flagship business-news programme, Lou Dobbs Tonight, which you might expect to strive for economic literacy, has embarked on a rabidly anti-trade editorial agenda, with its host greeting every announcement of lost jobs as akin to a terrorist assault.

The fact that foreign competition now impinges on services as well as manufacturing raises no new issues of principle whatever. If a car can be made more cheaply in Mexico, it should be. If a telephone enquiry can be processed more cheaply in India, it should be. All such transactions raise real incomes on both sides, as resources are advantageously redeployed, with added investment and growth in the exporting country, and lower prices in the importing country. Yes, trade is a positive-sum game. (Adam Smith did think of that.)



How disruptive?
The movement of jobs to the developing countries does not alter the overall level of employment in the advanced economies; however, the pattern of employment, to be sure, does change. In the aggregate, this is desirable, just as it is desirable that labour-saving technological progress should change the pattern of employment. (By the way, does anyone still believe that labour-saving technology destroys jobs overall?) So far as the effects on individuals are concerned, this process does have consequences that need to be examined and, in some cases, softened. Adequate private and public investment in skills and lifelong education is paramount in this new world, and is where attention should be focusing. But the image conjured up by the self-interested purveyors of alarm, of a hollowed-out America with relentlessly rising unemployment, is not just false but absurd.

The new jobs migration, while raising no new issues of principle, may indeed involve bigger political and economic strains than earlier bursts of expanding trade. Workers in manufacturing had long understood that they were exposed to the challenge of competition from overseas. Workers in services hitherto believed they were not: it is unsettling to be disabused. Also, it is true that the sheer scale of service-sector employment within an advanced economy arouses anxiety, unwarranted though it may be, about how disruptive the new forces of competition will be.

At the moment, the likely disruption to patterns of employment is surely being exaggerated. The actual and prospective migration of service-sector jobs is small, and likely to remain so, compared with the background level of job creation and destruction in an economy with as much vitality as America's. And technological and geographical constraints will continue to keep many service-sector jobs close to the customer. In some ways, in fact, this is a pity: the greater the disruption, the greater the benefits. As competition forces some jobs in services abroad, it will call forth the creation of new jobs in services in their place. And on average they will be better, higher-paying jobs than the ones that migrate. The evidence shows this is happening (see article). In practice as well as in principle, the fusty old idea of comparative advantage still works.
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Terror's Friend in Court
Injustice in progress.



This week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), popularly known as the World Court, is holding hearings that could result in an advisory opinion concerning the security fence now under construction by Israel. The immediate object of the exercise is to provide Arab and other opponents of the fence a new stick with which to pummel the Israelis. It is predictable, however, that the nation that stands to lose the most, ultimately, from the court's verdict -- that is, its decision to interfere with the steps sovereign nations take concerning their security needs and how to satisfy them -- will be the United States.



The court has been drawn into this precedent-establishing case by the United Nations' General Assembly, in which every member nation gets one vote, and the lowest common denominator of anti-Western and, most especially, anti-Israeli sentiment usually enjoys overwhelming majorities. Ninety nations in the General Assembly voted to approve a resolution put forward by Israel's enemies to portray the security barrier as an illegal and inhumane device, not least because of its location, in parts, on territory claimed by Palestinians.

Despite the opposition of the United States and some two dozen of the world's other leading nations, the ICJ is poised to do just that. After what will likely be perfunctory hearings starting Monday in the Hague, the Court is expected to render a conclusion that will legitimate a new torrent of invective against Israel. Worse, it may well precipitate demands that the U.N.'s Security Council give force to the Court's findings by imposing sanctions on Israel if it fails to halt construction of the fence. The Bush administration would be under intense pressure not to veto such sanctions, given its own stated opposition to the fence's construction (a position not seen as inconsistent with its view on the procedural question of whether the ICJ should be addressing this issue).

This process will penalize Israel, or at least further contribute to its pariah status in the United Nations, for doing nothing more than trying to protect its people from murderous suicide bombers and other terrorists in the most passive and nonviolent manner imaginable. Those much given to castigating the Jewish state for engaging in the sorts of counterterrorism operations that have resulted in the destruction of Palestinian terror cells, their leaders and bomb makers, and, on occasion, the unintended deaths of innocent bystanders, should commend Israel for adopting such a humane alternative.

To be sure, some of those now opposing Israel's security barrier might be willing to mute their criticism if only Israel would have the fence follow a different course; specifically, if it were to fence off the West Bank in much the same way Israel has protected itself from terrorists based in the Gaza Strip, namely along the so-called "Green Line" demarcating the territory Israel controlled prior to the 1967 Six-Day War from the areas it conquered during that conflict.

Doing so, however, would deny the fence's anti-terror protection to many tens of thousands of Israelis living in the West Bank. It would also effectively constitute a status quo ante boundary that would reward the Palestinians for their refusal to make peace with Israel. The upshot can only be further to intensify the confidence Yasser Arafat and his ilk already enjoy. Continued intransigence will eventually result in the realization of their ultimate and unchanging aspiration -- the destruction of the State of Israel.

Unfortunately, the United States has an even bigger stake in this ICJ proceeding than the injury that will befall its most reliable and valuable -- and only democratic -- ally in the Middle East. As Ruth Wedgwood, one of the nation's most eminent and highly regarded experts on international law, recently put it:

The U.S. has no veto in the General Assembly, and we need to be concerned about the evasion of consent-based rules for international adjudication. The next request for an Advisory Opinion could ask the court, without U.S. consent, to pronounce on the legality of the war in Iraq or American attempts to stop the proliferation of nuclear material. Such opinions -- even though non-binding under the U.N. Charter -- are dangerous, because they are seen by the "victors" as conferring legitimacy on their position.
Indeed, one can only imagine the measures the United States would otherwise have taken to protect its citizens that it might now feel pressured to avoid, for fear of being subjected to General Assembly requests for World Court intervention and adverse opinions. Our conduct of the war on terror, including legal steps intended to secure the homeland -- e.g., perhaps, our own security fence along the Mexican border -- could conceivably be denounced by the ICJ and, thereafter, be viewed as illegitimate by the international community.

No good can come of any of this. While John Kerry clearly fancies the idea of expanding the power of the United Nations and subordinating American sovereignty to its dictates, most Americans appreciate that that would be a formula for disaster.

The United States should make clear to the United Nations that, as a matter of principle, it would be injurious to this country's future relationship with and funding for the International Court of Justice and its parent organization, the U.N., for the Court to issue an advisory opinion on the Israeli security fence. As Professor Wedgwood notes, the World Court has the right to decline to do so "in compelling circumstances." This certainly fits the bill.

-- Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the president of the Center for Security Policy and an NRO contributing editor.
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The Great Iranian Election Fiasco
What actually happened; what we must do.



Even for a regime that excels in deception, the announcement by the Iranian government that nearly half the eligible voters cast their ballots in Friday's election is an extraordinary bit of effrontery. And even those Western "news" outlets that decided to pronounce the turnout "low" (the BBC, of course, echoed the party line by talking about a large turnout), did so by comparing the official numbers with those of the last parliamentary election, when more than 60 percent voted for the toothless "reformers."



The real numbers are a tiny fragment of the official ones. The overall turnout came in at about twelve percent, with Tehran a bit lower, and places like Isfahan and Qom (of all places, the headquarters of the Shiite religious elite) closer to five percent. The only major city with a substantially higher turnout was Kerman, due to a local factor: A widely hated hardliner was running, and many people judged it more important to demonstrate their contempt for him personally by voting for others than to show their rejection of the regime en bloc by abstaining.

It shouldn't have been hard to get this story right, at least in its broad outlines. A leading member of the old parliament, Mehdi Karoubi, was asked why he did badly, and he replied, publicly: "because the people boycotted the election."

Keep in mind that the reporters knew full well that all but a handful of polling sites in Tehran -- the only place they were able to observe, thanks to the usual clampdown on information -- were virtually dead. They knew, or should have known, that the regime had trotted out more than 10,000 "mobile voting booths," that is to say, trucks driving around inviting people to vote. They surely heard the stories -- widely repeated on Iranian web sites -- of thousands of phony ballots, and of citizens being forced to turn over their identity cards, thus making it possible for others to pose as legitimate voters. They must also have heard that high-school students were warned that if they did not vote they would never get into the universities.

But they did not report any of this. The Washington Post's Karl Vick wrote an upbeat report, as if the hardliners had won a normal election, and CNN's legendary Ms. Amanpour stressed that Iran was changing for the better since the dress code for women had loosened a bit in the past few years. Neither seemed to know that there were violent protests throughout the country, that several people had been killed and scores wounded by the regime's thugs, and that highways were blocked because the regime was afraid the protests would spread. There was enough electoral fraud to fill any Western news report, had the correspondents wished to do so. As the website www.iranvajahan.net reported, "In Firoozabad, Fars, people clashed with the Law Enforcement Forces when a cleric by the name of Yunesi-Sarcheshmeyi was declared the winner. In Miando-ab, West Azerbijan, some of the cheaters have publicly confessed how they were taught by a cleric to remove the voting stamp from their ID cards and vote again. In Malekan in East Azerbijan, people were told that 45,000 are eligible to vote, yet the number of declared votes for candidates totaled 50,000! Everyone including children and old people have poured into the streets of Malekan and there is non-stop running battles with the Law Enforcement Forces." The Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Democracy in Iran recorded violent clashes in Izeh, a southern city where a local politician was murdered by security forces when he protested his exclusion from the electoral list. Other protests were reported from Khorram-Abad, Firoozabad, and Dehdasht in the south, in Isfahan, and near the Afghan border in Mashad, Sabze-war, Nelshaboor, and Tchenaran.

Instead of this important information, we get the usual election-day analysis, as if a real election had been conducted, and one could understand something important about Iranian public opinion from the official numbers.

Oddly, the wild distortion of the real results does show something that the mullahs do not want us to know. They fear the Iranian people, knowing how deeply the people hate them, and they believe they must continue to tell a big lie about popular support for the regime. But the people know better. Thus, the demonstrations.

The regime clearly intends to clamp down even harder in the immediate future. Hints of this were seen in the run-up to the election, when Internet sites and foreign broadcasts were jammed, the few remaining opposition newspapers shut down, and thousands of security forces poured into the major cities. One wonders whether any Western government is prepared to speak the truth about Iran, or whether they are so determined to arrive at make-believe deals -- for terrorists that are never delivered, for promises to stop the nuclear program, that are broken within minutes of their announcement, or for help fighting terrorism while the regime does everything in its power to support the terrorists -- that they will play along and pretend, as Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has put it, that "Iran is a democracy."

For those interested in exposing hypocrisy, it is hard to find a better example than all those noble souls who denounced Operation Iraqi Freedom as a callous operation to gain control over Iraqi oil, but who remain silent as country after country, from Europe to Japan, appeases the Iranian tyrants precisely in order to win oil concessions.

Meanwhile, the only Western leader who consistently speaks the truth about Iran is President George W. Bush, and the phony intellectuals of the West continue to call him a fool and a fascist. Meanwhile, his most likely Democrat opponent, Senator John Kerry, sends an e-mail to Tehran Times, Iran's official English-language newspaper, promising that relations between the United States and Iran would improve enormously if Kerry were to be elected next November.

Finally, perhaps our enterprising journalists could ask the administration how it can be, three years after inauguration, that we still have no Iran policy. Yes, Virginia, there is still no National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) on Iran, even though Iran is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, and we claim to be in a war against the terror masters.

Faster, please.
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200402231057.asp

>> HORSE TRADE WATCH?


Pakistani Offensive Aims at Driving Out Taliban and Qaeda
By DAVID ROHDE and CARLOTTA GALL
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 22 -- Pakistan is preparing for a major military offensive against Taliban and Al Qaeda forces along its border with Afghanistan in the next several weeks, Pakistani government officials said this weekend.
The operation may be the first act of a violent, and potentially pivotal, spring season along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to Western diplomats, Pakistani military experts and American military officials.
American military officials said they expected Taliban and Qaeda fighters to try to disrupt national elections scheduled for June in Afghanistan. American and Pakistani officials said they would step up their efforts to gain control of the rugged border region, the area where they believe the fugitive Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, is hiding.
Pakistani officials denied recent news reports that the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been narrowed down to an area of several dozen square miles. Instead, they said the planned offensive was part of a calculated, step-by-step campaign to drive Qaeda members over the border to where American forces would be waiting for them.
"There has certainly been pressure building up on Al Qaeda and their tribal supporters," a senior Pakistani official said Saturday. "They are on the run and we will not let this momentum peter out."
Muhammad Azam Khan, the top Pakistan government official in the South Waziristan tribal agency, said he had requested a steep increase in the number of Pakistani troops in the area -- to 12,000 from 4,000. Hundreds of Qaeda members, including Chechen and Uzbek fighters, are thought to be hiding in the border area and mounting attacks on American forces in nearby Afghanistan.
"We are waiting for the troops to come," Mr. Khan said in an telephone interview Sunday. "Ours is a large area that requires a large number of troops."
Last Tuesday, the commander of the American-led forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, told reporters that American and Pakistani forces were trying to work together like a "hammer and anvil" to trap and destroy Taliban and Qaeda forces.
Lt. Col. Matthew P. Beevers, director of public affairs for coalition forces in Afghanistan, said Saturday the new tactics included having small groups of soldiers deployed to villages for days at a time. By distributing aid and becoming a more permanent presence, American officials hope to gain the trust of Afghans and collect better intelligence. In the past, large groups of American forces carried out vast offensives and sweeps, and then returned to their bases.
"We are using small units much more than big-scale offensive operations," Colonel Beevers said.
Afghan officials and Western diplomats in Kabul said they were now, finally, getting "full cooperation" from Pakistani forces along the border. Since the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, Afghan officials had complained that Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was not making a serious effort to crack down on Taliban fugitives.
In recent weeks, however, there has also been a sharp shift in General Musharraf's public statements. After months of playing down the presence of Qaeda and Taliban fighters on the Pakistan side of the border, he has repeatedly stated in speeches that Qaeda members are in Pakistan and must be eradicated. He has also promised that militants who surrender to the Pakistan authorities will not be handed over to the United States.
"I am fully confident that we will combat them," General Musharraf said in a speech to Islamic scholars last Wednesday, referring to foreign militants who he said misused Pakistan territory to advance their own agenda, state-run media reported.
A Western diplomat and senior Afghan official in Kabul, as well as a leading Pakistani military expert and senior Pentagon officials, said the shift occurred after General Musharraf was nearly assassinated by suicide bombers on Dec. 25.
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani military expert, said the militants, whom the Pakistan Army covertly backed in the past, were now directly challenging the military, which has dominated the country for decades.
"These groups are challenging the army," Mr. Rizvi said. "And the army never likes to let the initiative slip out of their hands."
Pakistani military officials dismissed those explanations and insisted that they had always aggressively tracked Qaeda and Taliban members. They point out that General Musharraf brought the army into the tribal areas in 2001 for the first time in Pakistan history and that Pakistani forces have arrested 500 suspected Qaeda members. Afghan and Western critics, for their part, point out that nearly all those arrested were low-level Qaeda members, and that few senior Taliban have been apprehended in Pakistan.
On Sunday, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the Pakistan Army's chief spokesman, denied reports from Kabul that coalition forces were now able to enter Pakistan in "hot pursuit" of militants. He also played down talk of an offensive and declined to describe troop movements.
"The president has said many times where we will carry out an operation whenever it is necessary," General Sultan said.
Preparations for a new offensive are being made two months after Pakistan adopted a harsh, British colonial-era tactic of collective responsibility in the tribal areas.
Under this system, Pakistani officials massed troops in South Waziristan and handed tribal leaders a list of Pakistani men suspected of sheltering Qaeda members. If the tribe did not hand over the men, the entire tribe would be punished. The houses of the wanted men would be destroyed, state spending in the area would be cut and, if necessary, tribal members would be detained until the men surrendered.
In recent days, Pakistani officials said the tactic had not produced the desired results. Tribes have handed over only 48 of 82 wanted men, all low-level figures who lack the information Pakistani officials want.
David Rohde reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, for this article and Carlotta Gall from Kabul, Afghanistan. Mohammed Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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Ben Laden localis? ?


Oussama Ben Laden, le chef d'Al Qa?da, et pr?s de 50 de ses partisans, dont le mollah Mohammed Omar et l'Egyptien Ayman Al Zawahiri, auraient ?t? localis?s par les forces sp?ciales am?ricaines et britanniques ? l'int?rieur d'une zone de 15 km de large et en profondeur ? au nord de la ville de Khanozai et de Qetta ?, une zone montagneuse dans le nord-est du Pakistan, pr?s de la fronti?re afghane. C'est ce que rapporte le quotidien britannique Sunday Express, citant une source du renseignement am?ricain et un responsable r?publicain, ajoutant que les forces sp?ciales am?ricaines sont ? absolument certaines ? que Ben Laden, l'homme le plus recherch? du monde, et ses lieutenants ne pourront pas s'?chapper. Selon le journal australien The Sunday Mail, qui donne la m?me information, un satellite sp?cial les suit ? la trace. Dans la perspective des op?rations am?ricaines pr?vues au printemps pour mettre fin ? la cavale de Ben Laden, les quatri?mes du genre depuis le 11 septembre 2001, le Pakistan annonce qu'il va renforcer les mesures de s?curit? ? la fronti?re nord-ouest avec l'Afghanistan, une r?gion qui ?chappe depuis toujours ? son autorit?. Le g?n?ral David Barno, le plus haut responsable militaire am?ricain en Afghanistan, indiquait il y a quelques jours que les autorit?s pakistanaises faisaient pression sur les chefs tribaux en les mena?ant de r?torsions s?v?res (destruction de maisons) s'ils ne collaboraient pas. Un d?lai a ?t? fix? pour livrer les suspects, avec la promesse qu'ils ne seraient pas extrad?s s'ils se rendaient en d?posant les armes. Les Talibans et les ?l?ments du r?seau de Ben Laden, qui se savent en perte de terrain en Afghanistan, menacent de mener dans les prochaines semaines des op?rations militaires ? d'une ampleur sans pr?c?dent ? contre l'arm?e am?ricaine et les forces afghanes. ? Nous allons par exemple attaquer une grande ville, nous en emparer militairement, l'occuper pendant quelques heures puis l'?vacuer ?, explique lors d'un entretien avec un journaliste de l'AFP, Mohammed Saiful Adel, un chef militaire taliban qui reconna?t que les afghans collaborent ?troitement avec les membres d'Al Qa?da. Preuve de l'activisme des Talibans, l'h?licopt?re am?ricain abattu hier pr?s de Kandahar, dans le sud de l'Afghanistan. C'est le second h?licopt?re am?ricain abattu.
Le 23 novembre, un h?licopt?re MH-53 s'?tait ?cras? pr?s de la base a?rienne de Bagram (50 km au nord de Kaboul), faisant cinq morts. Les analystes occidentaux estiment que les Talibans vont s'efforcer de d?stabiliser l'Afghanistan par des op?rations spectaculaires dans la perspective des ?lections g?n?rales pr?vues en juin. Le Pr?sident-candidat George W. Bush, qui veut Ben Laden ? mort ou vif ?, r?ussira-t-il ? ? montrer ? avant novembre prochain ? la communaut? internationale la capture de Ben Laden, comme il a fait avec Saddam Hussein le 13 d?cembre
dernier ?
Djamel Boukrine
22-02-2004

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Pakistan denies al-Qaeda chief trapped
From correspondents in Islamabad
February 23, 2004
PAKISTAN has denied any knowledge of al-Qaeda terror network leader Osama bin Laden being cornered by US and British special forces in a mountainous area in the northwest of the country.
Bin Laden was reported to have moved to Quetta a month ago / AP
Britain's Sunday Express newspaper quoting "a US intelligence source" said bin Laden and "up to 50 fanatical henchmen" were inside an area 16km wide "north of the town of Khanozai and the city of Quetta".
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said bin Laden had not been "boxed in".
"I do not have any such information," he said.
"He is boxed in," the unidentified source was quoted as saying, adding that US special forces were "absolutely confident" that he could not escape.
According to the source, bin Laden moved into the area, "in the desolate Toba Kakar mountains", about a month ago from another area 240km to the south, the Sunday Express said.
In Washington, a Defence Department spokesman declined to comment.
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was believed to be with bin Laden, the report said.
Pakistan has stepped up security near the rugged border with Afghanistan ahead of new operations aimed at cornering Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, Pakistani intelligence sources said yesterday.
Bin Laden was not the immediate target of the operation, they said.
Agence France-Presse

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Osama cornered near Quetta: UK paper
* Sheikh Rashid denies report in the Sunday Express
LONDON: US and British special forces have cornered Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in a mountainous area in northwest Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border, the Sunday Express newspaper reported.
Quoting "a US intelligence source", it said Bin Laden and up to 50 fanatical henchmen were inside an area 16 kilometres wide and deep "north of the town of Khanozai and Quetta". "He is boxed in," the unidentified source was quoted by the tabloid as saying, adding that US special forces were "absolutely confident" that he could not escape.
According to the source, Bin Laden moved into Toba Kakar mountains, the Sunday Express said. In Washington, a Defence Department spokesman declined to comment on the report. Taliban leader Mulla Mohammed Omar is believed to be with Bin Laden, according to the report.
The area is under surveillance from a geo stationary spy satellite while US and British special forces await orders to move in, the newspaper said in its early edition, received late Saturday.
The Sunday Express said it was also told in London by "a senior Republican close to the White House and the Pentagon" this past week that Bin Laden had been located.
"They have found Bin Laden," the source described as an "intimate" of the family of President George W Bush, was quoted as saying. "They now know where he is within a manageable area which can be watched and controlled."
The Sunday Express said Bin Laden's whereabouts had been discovered from "a combination of CIA paramilitaries and special forces, plus image analysis by geographers and soil experts". "They studied the background in Bin Laden's last video and matched it to rocks in the Toba Kakar region," the newspaper said.
"A two-man special forces surveillance unit then infiltrated the area," it said, adding that they picked up their first clues that Bin Laden was in the area within a week.
"Other teams then slipped in," the Sunday Express quoted its source as saying. "To avoid any alert, helicopters were not used."
A graphic published alongside the Sunday Express report indicated that the area in which Bin Laden is supposedly hiding is immediately to the north of the Pakistani towns of Khanozai and Murgha. Meanwhile, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed categorically denied the Sunday Express report.
Talking to ARY One World, Sheikh Rashid said neither were there British or American forces in Pakistani territory nor had such an operation been conducted.
He said the Pakistani army troops had been deployed to seal the complicated area at Wana just to stop illegal entry from Afghanistan. He said the Pakistan Army had not started any such operation. It only strengthened its force to the secure country's borders, he added. Director General Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Shaukat Sultan said no official report of such an operation had been conveyed.
He said it was just a "speculative media report". --Agencies


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Malaysia to help IAEA question nuke suspect
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's police is willing to help the UN nuclear watchdog question a suspected middleman in Pakistan's illicit nuclear parts trade, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
Businessman Buhary Syed Abu Tahir told police of a $3 million sale to Iran of nuclear centrifuge parts made in Malaysia, according to a police report released on Friday. Mr Tahir told how Pakistani atomic scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan arranged the shipment of enriched uranium to Libya.
"He (Tahir) has not been arrested, that much I can say. Neither is he prevented from leaving the country," police chief Mohamad Bakri Omar said, according to the Star newspaper.
But the police are willing to help the International Atomic Energy Agency if it wishes to question Mr Tahir, he said. Mr Tahir has committed no crime and is free to leave Malaysia, Mr Omar said. He was not under arrest and his passport had not been confiscated, he added. --Agencies

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How far did Dr Khan spread nuclear technology?

Daily Times Monitor

VIENNA: Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan presided over a nuclear smuggling operation so brazen that the government weapons laboratory he ran distributed a glossy sales brochure offering sophisticated technology and shipped some of its most sensitive equipment directly from Pakistan to countries such as Libya and North Korea, Los Angeles Times (LAT) reported on Sunday.
The paper said that the brochure, with photos of Dr Khan and an array of weapons on the cover, listed a complete range of equipment for separating nuclear fuel from uranium. Also for sale were Dr Khan's "consultancy and advisory services," and conventional weapons such as missiles, according to a copy of the brochure provided to the LAT. A reporter for Jane's Defense Weekly picked up some brochures at a conference in Karachi in 2001 and mentioned them in an article. The cover of one bears a photograph of Dr Khan and the seal of the Pakistani government.
LAT said the previously undisclosed brochure was published in 1999. A nuclear expert who examined it said the key elements were the ultracentrifuges for sale and the offer to provide the expertise to set up the centrifuge lines, though there was no mention of nuclear weapons. A senior US official who was closely involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation efforts was unfamiliar with the brochure but said it sounded like something Dr Khan would do.
"He's the promoter type," the official said, "interested in packaging himself and his abilities." LAT said the brochure had raised new questions about how far Dr Khan's network spread nuclear know-how and why authorities didn't move against it sooner.
Inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, and intelligence and law enforcement authorities on three continents are trying to reconstruct what they consider the worst nuclear proliferation network in history, and to dismantle it.
Top diplomats in Vienna and senior US officials said they were urgently trying to determine whether blueprints for a nuclear warhead and designs to build the device, which were sold to Libya, and highly sensitive data and equipment shipped to Iran and North Korea, might have spread beyond those countries. In addition, investigators have not been able to account for much of the equipment the network bought.
"Who knows where it has gone?" said a senior US intelligence official, who described the Bush administration as deeply worried. "How many other people are there? How widespread was it, and how much information has spread?"
"These people have been doing business all over the world," said Robert Oakley, a former US ambassador to Pakistan. "It is a huge problem and it goes far beyond AQ Khan. Nobody paid attention to what they were doing."
Questions also are being asked about whether the US missed opportunities to stop Khan. LAT said the Pakistani scientist's full-service nuclear trafficking network operated for nearly two decades, often under the cover of his government lab, even as Western intelligence agencies grew more suspicious of him and senior US officials repeatedly protested to Pakistan.
CIA director George J Tenet said this month that the agency penetrated elements of the smuggling ring in recent years, but needed proof to stop it. Other administration officials and outside experts suggested, however, that at least parts of the enterprise could have been shut down. "If you have penetrated the system, why not stop it before Libya got the weapons design?" a senior European diplomat based in Vienna asked. "There is no limitation on a copying machine."
US intelligence officials and diplomats said they had known the broad outlines of Dr Khan's activities since at least 1995.
Three times from 1998 to 2000, President Clinton raised concerns about nuclear technology leaking from Pakistan to North Korea during private meetings with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Pervez Musharraf, the general who replaced him in a 1999 coup.
"In each case, President Clinton was assured that these concerns would be looked into and would be dealt with appropriately," recalls Karl Inderfurth, who as assistant secretary of State was Clinton's chief South Asia troubleshooter. "To my knowledge, we did not receive any satisfactory responses to our concerns. It is now clear the smoke we saw at the time was indeed the fires being set by AQ Khan."
LAT said the US concerns were inherited by the Bush administration, and fears escalated after disclosures in late 2001 that two Pakistani nuclear scientists had met twice that year with Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
US authorities said that although the CIA, State Department and National Security Council knew the outlines of Dr Khan's activities, gathering proof was painstaking and difficult and they could not have moved against him sooner. They also said the CIA wanted to learn as much as possible about the ring before bringing it down. "Certainly we had questions about AQ Khan going way back, about his predisposition to share information and technology," said a senior Bush administration official with long involvement in non-proliferation. But investigators can only assemble the complete picture piece by piece, the official said. "You never get the whole thing dumped in your lap. Once you get the whole picture, it's easy to see what to do about it," the official said.


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Benazir consulting party leaders on April 2 return
By Mubasher Bukhari
LAHORE: Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Chairperson Benazir Bhutto will consult her party leaders in the United Kingdom today (Monday) regarding her return to Pakistan on April 2.
She summoned around 40 party leaders from Pakistan for the meeting and asked her PPP stalwarts to stay on, as she wanted to finalise the issue of her return. The meeting was held at former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) director general Rehman Malik's house.
All the PPP leaders attended two Friday sessions and the Saturday morning session. Ms Bhutto only met a dozen PPP leaders including Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Khalid Ahmad Khan Kharal, Qasim Zia, Naveed Qamar, Khurshid Shah, Yousaf Talpur and Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar at Saturday's evening session and discussed her return to Pakistan.
"We were expecting discussions on issues like her return, the PPP's reorganisation and anti-government agitation, but she only discussed the date of her return," a PPP stalwart told Daily Times from the UK.
He said, "Earlier, she used to ask the party leaders about her return, but this time she told us that she had decided to attend her father's death anniversary on April 4.
When she asked us about the plan, one leader proposed that she should land in Multan by chartered plane on April 2 and proceed to Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, Larkana with a huge procession of workers." He also said Ms Bhutto liked the idea and would further discuss it with the leaders today.

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Seven killed in post-polls violence in Iran
TEHRAN: Seven people have been killed in southern Iran after sporadic violent clashes followed the announcement of results from Friday's controversial parliamentary elections, reports and officials said on Sunday.
Four people were killed in clashes on Saturday with police in Izeh in southwestern Iran, a provincial official said.
"Demonstrators wanted to attack the prefecture but police prevented them. Then they attacked the town hall, and police opened fire and used tear gas," the deputy governor of Khuzestan province was quoted as saying. "The deputy elected, Seyed Hadi Tabatabai, is safe and sound," added that the official, whose name was not given.
He explained the protestors were contesting the results that saw the conservative candidate win. Another source told the agency that the mobs were venting their anger over alleged irregularities in the polls. Thirty people were arrested, he said.
In Firouzabad in the southern province of Fars, a local politician said that "three or four people" were also killed and six others injured there on Saturday after similar protests.
The source, who asked not to be named, said the victorious conservative candidate there raised suspicions after winning an "abnormally high number of votes".
Press reports on Sunday has pointed to violence in other areas of the country, but no further details on other trouble spots were immediately available. --AFP

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Sunni Muslim power keg set to explode'
* British mediator says civil war may erupt if US fails to win over Sunni minority in Baghdad
* Warns of dire consequences if the community is pushed towards isolation
BAGHDAD: An Anglican Christian clergyman mediating in Iraq said on Sunday he feared civil war could erupt if the US-led administration failed to win over the Sunni Muslim minority.
Canon Andrew White, who is negotiating between the US-led occupation authority and Iraq's rival sects, warned of dire consequences if the once privileged Sunnis are increasingly marginalised as majority Shias push for more power.
"My biggest fear is that if the Sunnis are pushed too hard, they will explode.
They need to be won over, otherwise there will be dangers of civil war," White, special representative to the Middle East for the Archbishop of Canterbury, told Reuters.
"I have spoken with Sunni clerics who are worried about discontent in their community, about Sunnis who will join forces with the guerrillas or cooperate with foreign groups such as Al Qaeda if they are driven too far," he said in an interview. Sunnis long dominated Iraqi political life, including under now toppled leader Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni.
White, who has mediated in conflicts including the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and Muslim-Christian riots in northern Nigeria, will on Tuesday launch an initiative to bring together Iraq's religious and tribal leaders.
His Iraqi Centre for Reconciliation and Peace hopes to try to influence the people behind the relentless violence that has gripped Iraq since a US-led invasion toppled Saddam last April.
Much post-war political attention has focused on Iraq's Shias, whose powerful leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has called for direct elections that would allow the sect to assert its numerical superiority of 60 percent of the population.
White, who has worked with religious groups in Iraq for five years, said Sunnis, who form 20 percent, feel more isolated at a time of simmering sectarian tensions and a bloody guerrilla campaign of bombings and shootings.
"The Sunnis are scared. They like to point out that in one of Saddam's palaces for instance there were 8,500 Shias working and 2,000 Sunnis and that now everyone sees them as the ones who were Saddam's allies," he said.
"We have been telling the Sunnis that they need to unite or it will be very difficult for them," said White.
White said he was encouraged that Iraqi clerics and tribal leaders had asked him to launch the Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, but he also saw that as a sign of their own fears over the country's uncertain future. --Reuters
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Allies to Finetune 6-Party Talks
Chief negotiators of South Korea, the Unites States and Japan will meet here today to fine-tune policy coordination ahead of the second round of six-nation talks on Feb. 25, government officials said on Sunday.
On hand at the trilateral discussion will be Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, James Kelly, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Asia-Pacific affairs, and Mitoji Yabunaka, director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian affairs bureau.
They will peruse a range of issues, including North Korea's alleged highly enriched uranium (HEU) program, freezing and dismantling of nuclear weapons, security guarantee for the North, and aid provisions.
The negotiation delegates from Washington and Tokyo will head for Beijing, China, where the six-way talks take place, following the trilateral consultation which ends today. Seoul's negotiation group is to leave for Beijing tomorrow.
The three countries' chief negotiators are the same officials who attended the first six-party talks in August, in Beijing. However, the talks, aimed at addressing the North Korean nuclear crisis, ended inconclusively.
yoonwonsup@koreatimes.co.kr

02-22-2004 22:12

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`WISHFUL THINKING':Few hopes for movement in North Korea talks this week
By TARO KARASAKI:The Asahi Shimbun
Nuclear program will likely dominate Beijing's 6-way talks.
Don't expect big breakthroughs on the nuclear or abduction issues during this week's six-nation talks in Beijing on North Korea's nuclear program, political experts say.
While hopes for change are high, they are largely based on what one expert calls ``wishful thinking,'' and radical movement is not likely in the talks that start Wednesday.
Pyongyang's willingness to show up not just for the multilateral talks but also at a surprise bilateral session with Japan earlier this month spurred optimism, but it is more likely Tokyo will have to settle for further talks on both issues.
One reason for pessimism is that North Korea's domestic situation seems to be improving, say observers.
The change of chief negotiators to Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's vice foreign minister and a chief negotiator with the United States, will also alter the course of the talks with representatives from Japan, South Korea, the United States, Russia and China.
``Frankly speaking, it is difficult to expect any breakthrough,'' said Masao Okonogi, a professor of politics at Keio University.
Okonogi said he felt expectations were being inflated out of desperation. He also voiced concern that a breakdown in progress, six months after the first round of six-way talks ended inconclusively, could strengthen calls for sanctions.
``Nobody wants to think of the prospect of raising the North Korean (nuclear) issue with the U.N. Security Council. The current thought is `something's got to give.' But that's just wishful thinking,'' Okonogi said.
He suggests that, contrary to much mainstream thinking, North Korea may not be as desperate to settle the issue and win assistance. He points to hints that economic activity is progressing, rather than regressing, in the North.
``None of the people who I have talked to who have returned from North Korea have noticed that conditions have deteriorated'' since the late 1990s when the country struggled to recover from massive floods and famine.
North Korea is not likely to compromise the nuclear capabilities it has gained and risk destabilizing its regime, Okonogi said.
Libya's recent agreement to scrap its nuclear program is not likely to serve as an example. In fact, it may have ``hardened North Korea's resolve'' to dig in its heels.
Okonogi offers three possible outcomes for the six-way talks: one, a tentative agreement, but no details on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program; two, an agreement for more talks, or three, a complete breakdown.
``I think the odds are equally divided between the three,'' Okonogi said.
Prospects for a quick resolution of the abduction issue are bleak, Okonogi said.
``Many people fail to realize that the abduction issue is deeply intertwined with the nuclear issue. Unless there is progress on the nuclear front, there is little chance for resolving the abductions,'' he said.
Hajime Izumi, a professor of international relations and director of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Shizuoka, is more positive on the abduction issue. Still, he warns, progress will likely come after, and not during, the six-way talks.
``There is a genuine desire on North Korea's part to get the abduction issue moving,'' Izumi said. He said Pyongyang wants to revive stalled normalization talks with Tokyo as soon as possible and so gain assistance concessions. He points to recent suggestions by North Korea that it is willing to return to the bilateral table.
But the abductions may not even appear on the agenda this time around.
``The North Korea delegation has no mandate to bring up the abduction issue,'' Izumi said, pointing out that Kim, the North's chief negotiator, is a specialist in nuclear affairs.
``The public should not be too discouraged if no progress is made (on the abductions) at these talks,'' Izumi said. He said he is concerned that overreaction by the abductees' families and their supporters could ignite calls for sanctions, further complicating matters.(IHT/Asahi: February 23,2004) (02/23)

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>> YOU DON'T SAY...

EU report criticises flaws in relationship with Russia
By Judy Dempsey in Brussels
Published: February 22 2004 21:54 | Last Updated: February 22 2004 21:54
In a rare admission of failure, the European Union has conceded that its attempts to manage relations with Russia are ineffective and flawed, and lack an overall strategy.
The damning criticism, contained in a confidential six-page memo obtained by the Financial Times, will be presented to EU foreign ministers on Monday.
The assessment - one of the most critical analyses of the poor state of EU-Russia relations - comes at a crucial time. It is especially embarrassing because EU leaders in 1999 had specifically agreed a common strategy for Russia.
With the EU ready to admit 10 new countries on May 1 - eight of them former Communist regimes - Russia is refusing to accept the permanent extension of the EU's Partnership and Co-operation Agreement to new members. Its main complaint is that the PCA will allow the new members to export at lower tariff levels to Russia.
Diplomats, however, say the PCA is just one of the issues that expose the lack of a coherent strategy inside the EU. The Council, which represents the member states, and the Commission, which negotiates trade issues with Russia, often adopt differing strategies. "The Commission pulls one way, the member states the other," said one.
Indeed, when Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, and Chris Patten, the external affairs commissioner, sought to present a joint assessment on Russia at Monday's meeting they were blocked. EU diplomats claimed that the staff of Romano Prodi, the Commission president, had stopped the joint paper out of bureaucratic jealousy.
The internal memo on the EU's lack of coherence was prompted by last November's EU-Russia summit in Rome. Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy, which then held the rotating EU presidency, ignored EU policy guidelines. He refused to criticise President Vladimir Putin's human rights violations in Chechnya and Moscow's opposition to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
In unusually blunt criticism of the member states, the paper admits: "Russia has often made use of differences among the member states and EU institutions and used a policy of linking often unrelated issues." It says the ability of all EU institutions and states to "speak with one voice will always remain a decisive factor determining whether the EU's policy towards Russia is successful".
In future, the paper recommends that for each summit the EU should set out its "red line issues", spelling out positions "beyond which the EU will not go" and which member states and institutions will be expected to support. Senior diplomats said they had no illusions over how difficult it would be for EU member states and Commission to speak with one voice over Russia.

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Scandals spur pay backlash
By Elizabeth Wine in New York
Published: February 22 2004 22:25 | Last Updated: February 22 2004 22:25
Shareholder activists are gearing up for a busy season of US annual meetings.
Nearly 700 corporate governance proposals, or proxies, have been filed with US companies so far, a volume exceeding the number filed this time last year, itself a record.
In earnest, shareholder meetings get under way in early March but investors are already deciding how they will vote on proposals submitted by managers and shareholders.
Jay W Lorsch, a professor at Harvard Business School who specialises in corporate governance, said that even though corporate scandals peaked last year, the volume of shareholder resolutions had surged now because investors remained irked.
"This is all about lack of shareholder power in the governance process. My sense is that everybody's been agitated by the misdeeds of the past few years, the accounting problems and the [executive] compensation issues."
Executive pay is the hottest topic this year, accounting for roughly one-third of the 693 shareholder proposals filed to date, according to the Investor Responsibility Research Center, which monitors proxy voting.
Ann Yerger, deputy director at the Council of Institutional Investors, an advisory group for shareholders, said: "Compensation is the number one issue for my constituents. It's just this general sense of disgust and outrage over the pay excesses, and there's been no retrenchment in the levels. There's a bad taste in everybody's mouth - a lot of our members see this as a symbol of everything that's wrong [with corporate governance]."
Other proposals aimed at empowering investors include demands for their right to approve auditors, as well as calls for companies to honour shareholder wishes.
Currently, companies are not bound to implement shareholder proposals that have been passed by a majority vote. Three New York City pension funds have asked boards at Maytag, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Honeywell International and Manor Care to establish a process for meeting with activist shareholders to discuss the approved proposals.
The return of robust earnings and soaring stock prices is likely to boost executives' expectations of generous pay packages. But shareholder activists, led by labour union pension funds, are determined to bring them down to earth.
Many of the proposals embody what Carol Bowie, director of Governance Research at IRRC, calls a "common sense" approach to executive pay, including capping the salaries for chief executives at $1m. Such proposals have been filed at Delta Airlines, Dow Chemical, EMC, Gannett, Gap, Eli Lilly, Merck and Merrill Lynch.
Other proposals are aimed at eliminating or reining in the use of stock options as compensation, and replacing the practice with performance and time-based restricted share programmes. There are also proposals to require shareholder approval for lavish executive retirement packages and so-called "golden parachute" severance packages.
Another buzzword during this proxy season is "shareholder access", a controversial proposal to allow investors to nominate directors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a new rule to allow shareholders to nominate their own candidates for a board of directors, and will host a round table on the issue on March 10. When put up for public comment, the idea generated a record number of letters - 12,000.
Companies are vigorously fighting the proposed rule but Calpers, Calsters and the NY State funds - three of the most influential public pension funds - are testing the waters with a proposal to nominate directors for Marsh & McLennan.
The insurance company, also the parent of scandal-plagued Putnam Investments, has challenged the filing with the SEC.
Ms Bowie said this could be the most closely watched proxy battle of the season. Similar proposals have been filed at Verizon and Dominion Resources.


>> DIVIDENDS? WHERE?

Pay back time for Wall Street's big hitters
By David Wells in New York
Published: February 22 2004 21:59 | Last Updated: February 22 2004 21:59
Wall Street's top executives received handsome pay rises for cutting costs and boosting profits last year, with some packages for chief executives nearly doubling, regulatory filings will show this week.
Compensation experts expect remuneration for some chief executives to match that of William Harrison, JP Morgan chairman, whose total pay more than doubled to $20m (?11m) in 2003.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns will, during the next two weeks, file proxy statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission that detail the compensation of top executives ahead of their annual meetings.
Similar statements will follow from Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and others.
Reports from Morgan Stanley and Goldman are scheduled for release on Monday. Goldman disclosed in December that Henry Paulson, chief executive, was awarded restricted stock valued at about $21m as part of his 2003 compensation. His entire package for 2002 was $12m. Most of Wall Street's chief executives, including Mr Paulson and Phil Purcell of Morgan Stanley, took pay cuts in 2002 because earnings and share prices declined.
But with Wall Street posting its third best profits ever last year, raises are expected to be the norm.
Executive pay is the hottest topic this year, accounting for one-third of the 693 shareholder proposals filed to date, say the Investor Responsibility Research Center, which monitors proxy voting. However, shareholder activists, led by labour union pension funds, are determined to bring them down to earth.
Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, a New York-based specialist on compensation in financial services, said pay for top Wall Street executives could rise 20 per cent on average. "Our predictions for 2004 is that it will be better yet," he said.
The Securities Industry Association, which tracks Wall Street's earnings performance, said pre-tax profits for New York Stock Exchange member-firms for 2003 were about $15bn, a 116 per cent increase on 2002's $6.9bn. This is the third-best result after the record of $21bn earned in 2000 and $16.3bn registered in 1999.
Alan Hevesi, New York state comptroller, said in December bonuses paid to the 161,000 people in New York city's securities industry would be about $10.7bn, up 25 per cent from 2002. The average of $66,800 was the first increase since the stock market downturn began in 2000.
Additional reporting by Elizabeth Wine

>> NORK "CUT OUT" CONTINUED?

Japanese Daily Says China Stopped Pyeonyang-bound Shipment of Nuclear Related Material

The Chinese government reportedly seized nuclear related material bound for Pyeongyang just before the shipment was taken over the Sino-North Korean border last summer. According to an article in Saturday's edition of the Asahi Shimbun, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency informed Chinese authorities that a train headed for the North Korean capital was carrying a chemical called tributyl phosphate (TBP). TBP is a solvent needed in the process of extracting weapons-grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods.
The Japanese daily quoting an anonymous U.S. official says the train transporting the chemical was stopped and the material confiscated in the city of Dandong bordering North Korea. This latest report is viewed as not only evidence of North Korea's atomic activity but also shows China, a traditional ally, cooperating with the United States to stop Pyeongyang's nuclear program. There was no information on where the TBP may have originated.

And in another revelation regarding North Korea's nuclear activity, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto acknowledged that her country purchased technology for missile to carry nuclear weapons from Pyeongyang in 1993.

Arirang TV
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Momentum Builds on N. Korea Nuke Crisis
By SOO-JEONG LEE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -
Efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis intensified Sunday as the United States and Asian allies met in Seoul to forge a common stance ahead of crucial six-nation talks.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and Japanese Foreign Ministry Director General Mitoji Yabunaka arrived in Seoul on Sunday to hammer out details with their South Korean counterpart Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck.
The United States, Japan and South Korea agree that North Korea's alleged uranium-based atomic weapons program must be addressed in the upcoming negotiations.
But South Korea and Japan have recently on North Korea's offer to freeze its nuclear activities as a first step to resolving the standoff, in return for economic concessions from the United States. But Washington has demanded that North Korea first start dismantling its nuclear programs.
Wednesday's six-way meeting in Beijing between the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan will try to make progress on those issues.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said Sunday that any North Korean nuclear freeze must also allow inspections.
"On the assumption that nuclear inspections should follow, North Korea's freeze of its nuclear weapons programs must be the first step toward the ultimate abolition of them, including the one based on highly enriched uranium," Ban told South Korea's Yonhap News Agency during a trip to Saudi Arabia.
North Korea has said it would allow inspections, if a deal is brokered. But it is unclear how much freedom any outside inspectors would have in the tightly controlled country.
Earlier Sunday in Tokyo, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said "everything depends" on North Korea at the upcoming talks.
"On the one hand, they could break down in a day," she said of the talks. "On the other, in a best-case scenario, North Korea would acknowledge possessing enriched uranium, agree to give up all its nuclear activities and invite inspections."
North Korea's alleged uranium-based nuclear program could be a key stumbling block in the Beijing talks. The nuclear crisis flared in late 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea acknowledged having the program in violation of a 1994 agreement.
North Korea has since denied having a secret uranium program, in addition to its plutonium-based one, and on Saturday called the U.S. accusation a "whopping lie."
China has annoyed the United States by accepting North Korea's denial concerning a uranium program.
Some experts believe, however, that Pyongyang's denial has been undercut by recent disclosures that the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had assisted the communist state's uranium program.

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Japan Weighs Trade Squeeze on N. Korea
By GARY SCHAEFER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOKYO (AP) - They come in charcoal and black, with checks and pinstripes, and carry the English-language designer labels that Japanese shoppers take for granted.
But some of the men's suits on the bargain rack at a Daiei department store in Tokyo are cut from a cloth that would surprise many people here - they're made in North Korea.
"They're good quality for the money," said salesman Takashi Higuchi, standing near a sign announcing 10 percent off the usual $85 price. "Most customers are looking at the price, not where the suits come from."
These days, however, Japan's business with North Korea is getting closer scrutiny. As a new round of six-nation talks on the North's nuclear program begins Wednesday in Beijing, the government is under pressure at home to turn off the trade spigot to buttress its diplomatic leverage.
Despite decades of hostility that have kept the two governments from recognizing each other, Japan is the third-largest trading partner of North Korea, which is struggling to keep its shaky economy afloat.
The communist regime in Pyongyang also relies on hard currency sent home by North Koreans living in Japan, and Japanese authorities say drugs and spare parts for the North's military are smuggled out in cargos carried by North Korean ships.
Living within striking distance of North Korean missiles, Japanese have hardened their attitudes toward Kim Jong Il's regime because of the North's nuclear arms ambitions. But that is not their only concern.
Negotiations have failed to end a 16-month tug-of-war over the families of five Japanese abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s. The five were freed in 2002, but the North has refused to permit their children and one spouse to join them, and the issue has been kept in the public eye by the former abductees.
Debate on economic sanctions intensified this month when Parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill authorizing the government to freeze North Korean assets and restrict trade without a multilateral agreement such as a U.N. resolution. The governing party also is discussing a bill allowing the government to bar designated North Korean ships from Japanese ports.
For now, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is pursuing diplomacy, but his foreign minister suggested last week that sanctions would be seriously considered if relations deteriorate.
A test could come at the Beijing talks, which involve the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas. North Korea has threatened to exclude Japan from the talks if it brings up the abductees.
Most analysts believe Japan is unlikely to impose trade sanctions on its own at this point. Some doubt sanctions would have much of a sting without the cooperation of China and South Korea, North Korea's two largest trading partners.
Two-way trade between Japan and North Korea totaled $369.5 million in 2002, according to the Seoul-based Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency. That compares with China at $738.2 million and South Korea at $641.7 million.
But Japanese officials insist the law has strengthened their position.
"Before, our hands were basically tied," said Kenichi Mizuno, a lawmaker in Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "Now we can cut North Korea's lifelines if we have to."
Mizuno said the Pyongyang regime's belligerent outburst at the sanctions bill - warning in its state media that war was "imminent" - is proof that North Korea is being squeezed already.
Mounting tensions and Japan's intensified watch for contraband have cut the two nations' trade. Japan's imports of North Korean suits, for example, tumbled 46 percent last year.
North Korean ships unload mostly seafood and cheap suits in Japanese ports and return with used cars, refrigerators and other castoffs from the world's second-largest economy.
But the traffic also hides drug-running and parts smuggling for North Korea's military, Japanese officials say. Defectors claim North Korea's ballistic missile program is based on Japanese technology.
"Halting trade would make maintenance tough for the military," said Mitsuhiko Kimura, a North Korean specialist at Aoyama University. "With machinery you're stuck if you're missing just one part."
Policy-makers also may curb currency remittances by Japan's large North Korean community.
Some 600,000 Koreans live in Japan, and about a third are loyal to North Korea. Their declared remittances totaled about $40 million in 2002, although one lawmaker estimates the real figure is double that.

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

. Korea, U.S., Japan to Have Final Council on Six-Party Talks

Assistant Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuk, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs James Kelly, and Director-General of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Bureau Mitoji Yabunaka will meet at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade building Monday to have final discussions about the three countries' positions in preparation for the second round of the six-party talks.
With the six-party talks on North Korean nuclear ahead, Director-General of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Bureau Mitoji Yabunaka (middle), the head of the Japanese delegation, arrives at Gimpo airport in Seoul to attend final discussions with South Korea and the U.S. /Newsis
At the conference, the three countries will look over each other's keynote speeches that will be made on Wednesday, the first day of the six-party talks in Beijing. There will also be final decisions on compensations for North Korea in case it promises to dismantle all its nuclear programs, including its highly enriched uranium (HEU) program.
South Korea, the U.S., and Japan agreed to provide the energy aid that North Korea is requesting when North Korea freezes its nuclear facilities, premised on a decision by the North to completely dismantle said facilities. It is know, however, that there are slight differences in opinion as far as the concrete plans are concerned.

(Lee Ha-won, may2@chosun.com )

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U.S., Asia Powers Gear Up for N.Korea Nuclear Talks
Sun February 22, 2004 10:38 AM ET
By Paul Eckert
SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States urged North Korea Sunday to seize a "great opportunity" at crucial six-party talks this week on resolving a crisis over the reclusive communist state's nuclear weapons ambitions.
U.S. and Japanese delegations arrived in South Korea to coordinate policies before a second round of negotiations with North Korea, China and Russia in Beijing Wednesday.
"We have a great opportunity for all of the parties at the six-party talks, especially the DPRK (North Korea)," said Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, chief U.S. delegate.
Analysts held out modest expectations for the talks due to lack of trust between Washington and Pyongyang, main protagonists in a dispute that has stoked regional tensions since late 2002.
But host China has sounded broadly upbeat, and reports from regional capitals suggested that, despite public denials, North Korea appears prepared to discuss a suspected uranium enrichment program that its partners say is the crux of the dispute.
Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have made clear to Pyongyang that the Beijing talks must cover not only North Korea's plutonium-based nuclear arms program, but a second suspected bomb-making scheme based on highly enriched uranium.
"They are talking about a 'freeze', but what we are interested in is the content," Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said on a television talk show in Tokyo Sunday. "Is it just plutonium or does it include enriched uranium?"
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told reporters during a visit to Saudi Arabia that step one in a phased solution of the crisis required the North to freeze and agree to dismantle all nuclear programs subject to inspections.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, head of Moscow's delegation, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying he did not expect a breakthrough at the first six-way meeting in six months. He echoed top U.S. and Japanese officials in calling for a working group to conduct regular talks.
North Korea proposed last month to freeze its nuclear activities in exchange for energy aid and diplomatic rewards. But the offer apparently covered only its plutonium-based program, centered on a reactor and reprocessing facilities.
BEHIND DENIALS, MOVEMENT?
Pyongyang has denied having a uranium enrichment program. Saturday, it said Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's statement that he sold nuclear secrets to Pyongyang were part of a "whopping lie" fabricated by U.S. neoconservatives.
"The U.S. smear campaign once again forced the army and the people of (North Korea) to keenly realize what a just measure it took to build a nuclear deterrent force for self-defense by its own efforts," said the North's official KCNA news agency.
The United States says North Korean officials acknowledged the covert uranium program in October 2002 when confronted with evidence presented by U.S. officials, and only later denied it in the face of international criticism.
Despite the tough public posture, there are increasing signs that North Korea may be willing to address the uranium issue.
Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted sources in Beijing as saying North Korea's chief negotiator, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan, had showed understanding of "the need to eliminate suspicions" by covering the topic in Beijing. It said Kim might propose inspections for verification.
U.S. officials say their basic aim is to have Pyongyang commit by the end of this round to dismantling any nuclear arms programs. Washington has offered then to detail how it could guarantee not to attack the state President Bush called part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and pre-war Iraq.
Friday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he wanted to formalize the talks process, with working groups "that could stay in more regular session with each other."


? Copyright Reuters 2004. All rights reserved. Any copying, re-publication or re-distribution of Reuters content or of any content used on this site, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without prior written consent of Reuters.
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Seoul to Present 'Concrete' Plan During Six-Party Talks
A high-level South Korean government official said that during the next round of six-party talks set to open in Beijing on Feb. 25, Seoul will present a "concrete solution plan" that North Korea will evaluate positively.
The official said Friday that if North Korea freezes its nuclear program as a step to total dismantlement, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan can begin to show the North "through actions" about the compensation it demands. This is interpreted as meaning that if the North freezes its nuclear program with total dismantlement its eventual aim, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan will consider North Korea's requests for the removal of sanctions, its dropping from the State Department's list of states supporting terrorism, and energy assistance. The officials said "About the compensation problem, we put a lot of energy into persuading the Americans," suggesting that a harmonization of views with the United States has already taken place.
Concerning the highly enriched uranium program that the North denies having, the official hinted that South Korea's position on the matter might differ from that of the United States.
The official said, "During the three or four days of the second round of talks, so we can concretely come to an agreement about the problem of freezing [the nuclear program] versus compensation, we'll form working-level groups, and try to regularize the talks." He also said he has some idea concerning the timing of a third round of talks.
Meanwhile, "Come Back Home," an civic group for families of those abducted to the North, and five other local and foreign North Korean human rights groups visited the Foreign Ministry on Friday and met with Jo Tae-yong, the head of the ministry's diplomatic team for the North Korean nuclear issue. They asked Jo to officially raise the issue of South Korean abductees in the North during the six-party talks.
Choe Seong-yong, the head of "Come Back Home," said to Jo, "Japan has decided to strongly raise the issue of abductions during the talks, the U.S. says it will back them on this, but why doesn't our government, which rules a country where 480 people were kidnapped by the North, have any plans [to raise the issue at the talks]?" He requested that the South Korean negotiating team present the issue of abductions in its opening address on the first day of talks.
Choe and others also requested that the South use the talks to bring up refugees, human rights, and request an end to crimes against humanity in the North, such as human testing on political prisioners,

(Lee Ha-won, may2@chosun.com )
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Seoul Plans to Offer Pyeongyang Concrete Concessions for Freezing Nuclear Program

...with the latest in South Korea's preparations for the upcoming multilateral talks... on North Korea's nuclear program.
Officials in Seoul have given the press... an idea of what will be on the negotiating table... when delegates from the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan, and Russia... meet in Beijing next week.
Park Soojin has more in this report.
Seoul is willing to reciprocate Pyeongyang... should it freeze its nuclear weapons program... the first step in settling the nuclear standoff.
Speaking to the press on Friday... government officials in South Korea said... Seoul came up with three-stage plan for North Korea to abandon its nuclear development... along with corresponding concessions to be offered... during the second round of six-nation talks slated to begin in Beijing next Wednesday.
Senior officials noted the conditions to be suggested... are products of trilateral discussions among government representatives from Seoul, Washington and Tokyo... though not to be offered as a joint proposal.
They added... although debate over the highly-enriched uranium program is likely... it should be looked at from a broader perspective... and handled as part of the weapons program that needs to be dismantled.
A 13-member South Korean delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck will attend the new round of multilateral negotiations in Beijing.
North Korea... meanwhile... changed its chief delegate to Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan... from former representative Kim Young-il.
Observers say... the change implies Pyeongyang's willingness to engage in serious talks to yield substantive results this time around.
Park Soojin, Arirang TV.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

>> YOU SAY YOU WANT AN FTA?

The U.S.-Australia FTA Is Expect To Deal A Heavy Blow To Korean Manufacturers

The conclusion of a Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Australia last month... is expected to deal a heavy blow to Korean manufacturers.
A report released on Friday by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy shows... domestic manufacturing industries are expected to loose their competitive edge over a number of export items including automobiles, wireless communications equipment... semiconductors and computers both in the U.S. and Australian markets.
The report points out that since the domestic economy is heavily dependent on exports... it is necessary for Korea to push for more free trade pacts in order to stay competitive in the global market.

>> JONATHAN ON RFI...
Arabic (Radio Free Iraq) On-demand Audio Broadcasts
Sunday, 22 February, 2004
Recorded at (UTC) DURATION REALAUDIO WINDOWS MEDIA
16:00 60 minutes Listen Now FTP Listen Now FTP



>> QUOTE - "Levin's "obsession" with the numbers."

Senator Assails Tenet on Iraq
Likely Arms Sites Were Underreported
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page A20

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has renewed his longtime claim that CIA Director George J. Tenet misled Congress last year when Tenet said the CIA had given U.N. inspectors all the top suspect weapons sites in Iraq prior to the war.

Levin said Friday that after more than 10 months of letters back and forth and staff briefings, the agency declassified the number of the priority top suspect weapons of mass destruction sites given the United Nations, showing that "21 of the 105 high and medium priority top suspect sites on the CIA list were not shared."

In its Jan. 20 letter to Levin disclosing the numbers, the CIA repeated what it had told Levin last July: that the agency had provided the U.N. inspectors "with the intelligence that we judged would be fruitful in their search for prohibited material and activities in Iraq."

Of the 21 suspect sites not provided the United Nations, four were listed as high priority and 17 were of medium priority. None of those 21 nor any of the 33 high-priority and 68 medium-priority sites that were provided to the U.N. inspectors had prohibited weapons.

Levin speculated that had Tenet said a year ago that not all known sites had been shared with the United Nations, "it could have put an obstacle in the path of the administration's move to end U.N. inspections and proceed to war." He said an independent commission appointed by Congress, not the one established by President Bush, should "look at not just how the intelligence came to be so flawed." He added that Tenet's "lack of candor" was "more evidence of the shaping of intelligence to fit the administration's policy objectives."

A CIA spokesman said the agency "shared the best and most likely information" with the U.N. inspectors, and over the past year had attempted to satisfy what he described as Levin's "obsession" with the numbers. He added that he could not explain why the specific 21 sites were not shared with the United Nations before fighting began last March 19. The agency's July letter said that by the time U.N. inspections had stopped, it had provided its "best intelligence on which we had pertinent and possibly 'actionable' information."

In a letter to Levin last May 23, Tenet referred to his testimony and said he could have been more specific.

"In my testimony on 11 February to the committee, I said, 'We have held nothing back from sites that we believe based on credible intelligence could be fruitful for these inspections.' This is the crux of the matter, and I stand by that statement. In hindsight, we could have been more precise in the words we chose to describe which of the high and medium sites that we gave to UNMOVIC [the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission]. We were focusing on the intelligence we had that we believed would lead to fruitful efforts by the inspectors, rather than trying to specifically decipher our 'list of lists' and the process by which we shared information with UNMOVIC."
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washingtonpost.com
New U.S. Weapon: Jobs for Iraqi Men
Factory's Reopening Typifies Effort to Use Work to Defuse Insurgency

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page A18


RAMADI, Iraq -- U.S. Army Lt. Col. Hector Mirabile is in charge of troops in one of Iraq's most dangerous areas. Each day, he must sort through a mass of intelligence reports and plan raids and other missions, all while dodging mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire. But what takes up most of his brainpower is thinking about creating jobs.

When he spies a broken toilet, he thinks, one job; a downed power line, 15 jobs; a long stretch of littered highway, 200 jobs.

Like commanders in other danger spots, Mirabile says he believes the best weapon for fighting the insurgency that on average claims the life of one U.S. soldier each day is employment. Putting legions of angry, jobless men to work, he and others maintain, lessens the chance that they'll join the insurgents.

"There's a direct correlation in unemployment rates to attacks," said Mirabile, 46, of the Florida National Guard's 124th Infantry Regiment, which is under the command of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Mirabile's efforts are part of what is turning out to be a massive public works program, a sort of New Deal for Iraq. The occupation authority, the U.S. military and Iraqi ministries are hiring hundreds of thousands of people to sweep streets, landscape parks, fix traffic lights, erase graffiti, repair schools, libraries and other public buildings and work on other reconstruction projects. The funding comes from the billions of dollars of aid money donated by a number of countries.

When occupation officials arrived in Iraq after the war, ready to turn the country into a model for capitalism in the Middle East, they expected private companies to tackle the bulk of reconstruction -- and to hire the necessary workers. But months of violence have largely kept the private sector out of the country. With unemployment in Iraq estimated at 30 to 70 percent, the occupation authority is scrambling to create jobs. The success of the occupation, many officials now say, hinges as much on keeping Iraqis employed as on fixing and building things.

Last month, the first eight of what will eventually be 28 new government employment centers opened across the country. Their main goal is to create a massive national database that will match the unemployed with reconstruction jobs. In the northern city of Mosul, the occupation launched a "100,000 Jobs" program that will be funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. In Baghdad, the government announced it was offering free computer and language training.

Much of the effort has been concentrated in Anbar province, an expanse of desert west of Baghdad that is home to a large number of former loyalists of deposed president Saddam Hussein. The military and the occupation authority have poured more than $36 million over the past six months into such projects as fixing a water pump station, extending a phosphorus production facility, building a justice center and revitalizing a glass factory that is the No. 1 employer in Ramadi.

But just as Franklin D. Roosevelt's program for bringing the United States out of the Depression of the 1930s created controversy, the job-creation efforts here have spurred discussion about what this short-term fix means for Iraq's future.

Nouri Jafer, Iraq's undersecretary of labor, said that while he believes private enterprise is the country's future, he thinks the economy will be more of a mix of capitalism and socialism than the purely capitalist society that American planners once imagined. "A free economy is best, but because of the problems we inherited from Saddam Hussein, we'll have to have a government security system for at least the near future," Jafer said.

The State Company for Glass and Ceramics, across the Euphrates River from a palace where Mirabile and his troops are based, is a relic from the 1950s. The glass is fired in old-fashioned brick furnaces. Workers in dusty blue overalls handle rows of glass bottles coming off the assembly belts with their bare hands. Piles of broken glass are everywhere.

Postwar assessments by the occupation authority, the Ministry of Industry and Minerals and the World Bank were definitive about the plant's prospects in a capitalist economy. Employees are "poorly trained," the plant produces 25 percent waste -- "an extraordinarily high amount" -- and the venture is "grossly unprofitable," the assessments said.

"The company is not salvageable in [a] free market -- inefficient and low quality," the World Bank said. "Should be closed immediately."

And so the plant, which suffered no damage during or after the war but was shut down temporarily because of a shortage of electricity and gas, remained closed. By the end of the summer, however, Mirabile and the two other commanders who oversee the Ramadi area realized that if the plant were repaired, it could provide jobs for as many as 5,000 people.

Military engineers with a $20,000 cash allocation were dispatched to the plant to offer their assistance. The occupation authority made a special allocation of electricity, and the Finance Ministry issued an "operational loan" of $1.5 million, which the plant managers think is unlikely to ever be repaid because the company loses money. Repairs began in August, and by November the plant was producing glass again.

"If this factory closed, the situation in Ramadi would be chaos," said Fouad Anizy, 43, director general of the company. A sheet glass machine operator, Abid Ismaeel Dahir, 51, said if he were out of a job, he would become desperate and be tempted to do anything to support his family. "This place is my house, my food. It's everything," Dahir said.

Uday Mohammed, a 33-year-old civil engineer, said the reopening also gave Ramadi residents something intangible but important -- their dignity. Allowing people to go back to work, he said, gave purpose to their lives.

"The local people of Ramadi are good people," he said. "They are not against the Americans. They are against anyone who takes away their dignity."

Mirabile, who has an MBA and is the chief financial officer for the Miami Police Department, believes that fixing one factory improved the lives of thousands of Ramadi's 450,000 residents. First of all, he explained, there's the worker and his family. Then the merchants at the market where the worker buys fruits and vegetables, clothes and other goods. Then the local vendors who buy the bottles, the drivers who take the glass to other cities and so forth.

"There's a domino effect. When one group has money to spend and they spend it, others benefit," he said.

For the military and Iraqi security forces, that means more stability because "it makes it harder for people to say yes when someone offers them $200 to attack someone," Mirabile argued. "You have more to lose." To that end, Mirabile said he has focused on nurturing businesses that support the new Iraqi security forces and the coalition forces.

Mirabile added that he believes the government support will be needed only temporarily and that he is only jump-starting businesses that will stand on their own in the near future.

Raad Ismaeed Abdud, 42, a contractor who helped repair one of the glass factory's production lines, said that from his conversations with relatives, friends and neighbors, he estimates that the availability of new jobs in recent months has resulted in 70 to 80 percent fewer attacks launched by locals. Unfortunately, he said, the solution to stopping the rest of the attacks remains elusive because "they are being done by bad men from outside Iraq."


? 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Germany and France Driving EU, to Distraction of Other Members
Two Say Close Relationship Does Not Harm Europe's Interests

By John Burgess
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page A25


GENSHAGEN, Germany -- Every six weeks or so, the leaders of Germany and France drop everything and get together for a meal.

This month, the place was this tidy village 10 miles south of Berlin. French President Jacques Chirac arrived by helicopter, then rode through the streets in a black Mercedes, waving to the locals. Ahead, up the cobblestone drive of a mansion that houses a French-German cooperation institute, his counterpart Gerhard Schroeder was waiting. Beaming, the two men embraced, bantered for a moment by the car, then disappeared inside amid a clutch of aides for lunch and private talk.

From the start of European integration a half-century ago, French-German cooperation has been the driving engine. Today the tie is so close, at both the personal and national levels, that elsewhere in Europe some people see too much of a good thing. In their view, France and Germany are sometimes crafting the new Europe on the principle that what's good for them is good for everyone.

In the past year, the two countries have stood firm against the United States in the Iraq war, ignoring sentiment in other European capitals. In efforts to restart their stalled economies, they have violated the fundamental pact of the five-year-old euro common currency. Now they are helping hold up the drafting of the first European Union constitution by insisting on a voting system weighted in their favor.

"The two cooks come from the kitchen and say they have already prepared the dinner . . . You can either eat it or not eat it, but this is what the dinner is," said Jan Truszczynski, who represents Poland, an incoming European Union member, in negotiations. Too often, he said, that's the unpleasant taste the two leave behind.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, another critic, recently summed up the constitutional deadlock: "There's one issue being debated -- who's going to be the boss in the Europe of the future?" he told Washington Post reporters and editors last month.

In Berlin and Paris, officials concede that such tensions exist, but they say that whatever others may say, Europe's interests remain at the heart of the cooperation. Hans Martin Bury, Schroeder's coordinator for relations with Europe, depicts agreement between France and Germany, countries that have vastly different cultures and a history of animosity, as a natural starting point for any decision to be made in the 15-country EU as a whole.

"If we can't get together, there won't be a consensus in Europe," he said in an interview in his Berlin office. "We bring different interests and traditions together. Our interest is not to dominate Europe but to create new solutions."

The partnership is overseeing a future that includes admission of 10 new member countries on May 1, strengthened rule of law, human rights and environmental protection and a progressive pooling of money and decision-making. The union sometimes functions as a counterbalance to U.S. influence in the world, though in foreign policy the two big partners don't always prevail. During the Iraq war, Britain, Spain and Italy led a faction siding with Washington.

The union is creating closer ties between all members, but nowhere are they closer than between Germany and France. Their cabinets hold joint meetings twice a year. Ministers meet to work on "road maps" on issues of mutual interest. French officials are stationed in ministries in Berlin, and Germans serve with their counterpart agencies in Paris. In a few countries, the governments have joint diplomatic offices and cultural institutes.

The heads of German states and French regional governments met in October to approve the exchange of more students and teachers and generally enhance people-to-people links; about 150,000 people already take part in youth exchange programs each year. Plans call for a 50 percent rise in the number of students studying the other country's language. Historians from both sides are meeting in an effort to draft a common textbook for use in French and German high schools.

As the war generation dies out, ordinary people on the both sides of the long-disputed border are acquiring warmer feelings toward each other. In a November 2002 survey of people aged 15-30, 88 percent of Germans described relations as rather good or very good; 94 percent of French respondents did.

French and German officials contend that each day that things go so smoothly is a miracle, in view of the rivalries and wars between the two peoples stretching back to the Middle Ages.

Preventing yet another armed conflict between France and Germany was the vision underlying the EU's founding in 1951 as a six-country common market for coal and steel. In subsequent years, President Charles de Gaulle acted as Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's patron in readmitting Germany to respectability in the postwar period.

National needs have often helped smooth over personal differences between German and French leaders in the past, as is happening today. Chirac is a highly cultured man who attended France's elite schools and leads a right-of-center government. Schroeder has blue-collar roots and governs from the left. But by all outward signs, there is a personal rapport, and officials on both sides say it is real.

Relations between the two leaders were not always smooth. At an EU summit in Nice in December 2000, France and Germany clashed over a new framework for governance of an expanded EU. But a month later the two met for dinner at a restaurant in the French village of Blaesheim, on territory that had changed hands four times in 130 years. They decided to meet every six weeks or so, just to keep up. The lunch in Genshagen on Feb. 9 was the 17th such get-together.

The first big sign of parallel thinking came in 2002, when France and Germany reached a deal on restructuring EU farm programs, the largest single drain on the EU's $120 billion annual budget.

As the Iraq war approached, the two leaders again stood together, in opposition. Their reasons were different. Chirac sought to assert France's independence in the world, political analysts say, while Schroeder found he could save a failing reelection campaign by playing to antiwar sentiments among German voters. But the positions were the same: no support at the United Nations, no troops.

In the meantime, both countries' economies were stagnating as part of the global slowdown that followed the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Both governments tried to stimulate their economies through deficit spending, at levels supposedly outlawed by a pact that laid down rules for countries using the euro.

In theory, they became liable for fines equivalent to billions of dollars. In November, finance ministers from the euro countries voted 8 to 4 to forgive the transgression. Dutch Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm, a dissenter, complained that other ministers "had been intimidated by these two big countries."

France and Germany have also stood firm in the unsuccessful negotiations on the EU's first constitution. They and other countries say that to pass, a measure must have the backing of a majority of countries that represent at least 60 percent of the expanded EU's population of nearly 500 million people. That would make it hard for smaller countries to gang up against the big ones.

People in other countries sometimes see hints of coercion in statements from Germany, the biggest net contributor to the EU budget, that without agreement on the constitution it will be hard to settle on budgets.

The new style of business has also drawn criticism at home. In Germany, a debate broke out last year on whether the country was squandering trust and friendships built at great effort since 1945. "There is less willingness by people to think that France and Germany act in the interests of Europe," said Christoph Bertram, chairman of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "The Germans have lost something very important."

In France, said Jean-Luc Parodi, an analyst at the IFOP polling institute, the political elite is committed to the German ties. But among ordinary citizens, feelings can differ. Some "see a little risk in giving too much importance to this alliance and not enough to the total European alliance."

Officials in the two countries promise to try harder to consult, but some say that at times there's just no pleasing the critics. At the constitutional convention, said a senior French official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, delegates from other countries frequently asked: " 'What will France and Germany do?' They were waiting for the initiative from France and Germany . . . In other cases, they said, 'be careful, we don't want you to impose your views.' "

Bury said that Germany and France work hard to include other nations in consultations. British Prime Minister Tony Blair periodically attends three-way summits with Chirac and Schroeder, most recently Wednesday in Berlin. In addition, Germany and France are developing European military policy with Belgium and Luxembourg, and strengthening ties with Poland.

But in their public words and body language, Chirac and Schroeder seem to try to show there is no relationship like theirs. At news conferences, they talk about holding identical views. At times, each publicly grants the other a sort of political power of attorney -- the right to speak for both.

In Genshagen, dressed in similar gray suits, they stepped into a ballroom to deliver that message again to reporters.

Schroeder said: "The close, friendly French-German cooperation that has brought very, very pleasant personal experiences is truly fit to make progress for both countries, to make progress for Europe and to let the weight that we have together be clearly known in international discussions."

Chirac chimed in: "On the European topics that we have discussed our positions are absolutely identical. We have the same views." He went on to say that later in the day Schroeder would present those views on behalf of both men to Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

But one French reporter managed to zero in on discord. France wants to lower the EU-regulated value-added tax that restaurants collect; Germany is opposed. Chirac replied that France understands Germany's position, and Germany understands France's. Smiling, he added that on this issue France will not budge.



? 2004 The Washington Post Company

U.S. Agency Sees Global Network for Bomb Making
By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 -- Government forensic investigators examining how terrorists manufacture improvised explosives have found indications of a global bomb-making network, and have concluded that Islamic militant bomb builders have used the same designs for car bombs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, government officials said this week.
"Linkages have been made in devices that have been used in different continents," said one forensic expert involved in the intelligence effort. "We know that we have the same bomb maker, or different bomb makers are using the same instructions."
The previously undisclosed intelligence operation has expanded on studies of past cases like investigations of the thwarted shoe-bomb attack aboard a Paris to Miami flight in December 2001. In a test, detonation of a similar bomb on a grounded aircraft blew a 2 feet by 2 feet in the fuselage -- a potentially catastrophic event aboard a pressurized plane in flight.
In another example of the investigators' work, bomb analysts have collected fragments from hundreds of improvised devices detonated in attacks in Iraq, including large car and truck bombings and smaller assaults using explosives packed in empty artillery shells and even concrete blocks. That project has led to a better understanding of the devices and to efforts to provide commanders in Iraq with faster countermeasures to help protect American troops.
But there are many questions still unanswered about who is behind various bombings, including some of the major suicide bombing attacks in Iraq. Intelligence analysts have said they believe that Al Qaeda has been weakened by the campaign against terrorism and lacks a central command, as well as financial and recruiting structures. But the bomb investigations suggest that the terrorist network still may be disseminating bomb-making skills to a generation of militants who have fanned out around the world.
Many bomb makers may have learned how to make improvised explosives in the 1990's at Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, and the methods taught there may now be showing up elsewhere.
Intelligence analysts did not say there was evidence of a single controlling entity behind the construction of the larger car and truck bombs often used in the most deadly attacks, although they suggested that there might not be many people with the technical skills to build larger bombs.
Some counterterrorism officials have emphasized the need to identify and locate the relatively small number of master bomb makers responsible for the most lethal bombings.
Behind the effort to analyze the bombs is a new forensic intelligence unit, the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, or Tedac. The F.B.I., which took the lead in the center's creation, has found that in the last five years almost 90 percent of terrorist attacks against Americans have involved improvised explosives.
"Tedac is a multiagency effort to analyze improvised explosive devices," said Dwight E. Adams, director of the F.B.I. laboratory. "It gathers and shares intelligence related to the construction of these devices. Its purpose is to save lives."
The center's work has not previously been disclosed. Terrorism specialists in Congress were briefed on it this week.
While there is still debate about who is behind the bombings in Iraq, and none of the larger and most deadly attacks by suicide bombers have been solved, intelligence analysts said that they believed followers of Al Qaeda or ideologically sympathetic allies may be involved in some of the bombings. But the examination of bombs used in Iraq has so far yielded little information about the identity of who made them. Many bombs of different types explode every day in the country.
Examining tiny bits of bomb housings, wirings, detonation cords, fuses, switches, the chemical composition of the explosives and the electronic signatures of remote switching devices often used to detonate bombs, experts at the center have begun to compile a data bank about terror bombs. In some cases, forensic scientists have been able to obtain evidence of who made the bomb through a fingerprint or DNA material left on an explosive part.
The unit became operational in December after President Bush approved it, and lawmakers were told of the existence of the organization in recent days, the officials said. It has a broad mandate to examine not only bombings against Americans, but those directed against other countries like the recent assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
The unit, which is based at the F.B.I.'s laboratory in Quantico, Va., has drawn on experts from the Defense intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and other intelligence agencies.
In countries like Iraq, even sophisticated analysis has often failed to solve terrorist bombings. Investigators have collected valuable clues, including the fingerprints of the driver and license plate of the truck that carried the bomb that detonated outside the United Nations mission in Iraq in August 2003, killing dozens of people. Even so, in a country with no fingerprint files or vehicle records, authorities still do not know who was behind the attack.
The study of the unexploded device built into the sole of the shoe worn by Richard Reid, a British citizen who was sentenced to life in prison, is a model for how the new analysis center will operate. In that case, forensic examiners were aided by experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration.
Mr. Reid acknowledged he was a follower of Al Qaeda. But subsequent forensic investigation showed that the design of his shoe bomb followed specific details in training manuals found by American forces at training camps in Afghanistan. The design closely followed the manuals. For example, the fuse was cut at precisely the angle the manual advised.
It remains unknown who built the shoe bomb, but investigators doubt it was Mr. Reid. Forensic analysts found a partial fingerprint on the bomb and a single strand of human hair, but neither matched Mr. Reid's.
The forensic conclusions about the seriousness of Mr. Reid's shoe bomb have deepened concerns about the possibility of attacks aboard commercial airliners and provided a backdrop to the concerns that led American authorities to cancel abruptly several international flights to the United States in recent months.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
------------------------------------------------
Iran confirms buying nuclear equipment from subcontinent dealers
Tehran, Iran-AP -- Iran is confirming it purchased nuclear equipment from international dealers but says it doesn't know from whom.
A foreign ministry spokesman told reporters today that some of the dealers were from "subcontinent countries" but had no further details.
His comments come a day after Malaysian police released a report citing a businessman who said operatives of Abdul Qadeer Khan (ahb-DOOL' kah-DEER' khahn) sold uranium enrichment equipment to Iran for three (m) million dollars in the mid-1990's.
Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, has admitted selling technology and know-how to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful but the U-S suspects the Islamic nation of conducting a secret program to build a nuclear weapon.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
---------------------------------------------
Bhutto says Musharraf in nuke cover-up
LONDON (Reuters) - Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has accused the country's president
of covering up a vast scandal involving the leaking of nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Speaking on Sunday in Britain where she lives in exile, Bhutto said President Pervez Musharraf's decision
to pardon the top scientist at the centre of the scandal -- Abdul Qadeer Khan -- only fuelled suspicion the
president himself was involved.
"It seemed to me to be a big cover-up," said Bhutto, an arch-rival of Musharraf. "I know Qadeer Khan, and
I find it very hard to believe that he could have exported nuclear technology on his own... One person could
not do it because of the enormous security," she told BBC television.
In a dramatic televised confession earlier this month, Khan, who was revered as the father of Pakistan's
atomic bomb, said he acted independently in leaking secrets as head of Pakistan's nuclear programme from
the 1970s.
A day later, Musharraf pardoned the scientist, saying he remained a national hero despite passing secrets
to Libya, Iran and North Korea.


>> HOW WILL THEY PULL IT OFF?

washingtonpost.com
A Secret Hunt Unravels in Afghanistan
Mission to Capture or Kill al Qaeda Leader Frustrated by Near Misses, Political Disputes
By Steve Coll
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page A01
First of two articles.
The seeds of the CIA's first formal plan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden were contained in another urgent manhunt -- for Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani migrant who murdered two CIA employees while spraying rounds from an assault rifle at cars idling before the entrance to the CIA's Langley headquarters in 1993.
For several years after the shooting, Kasi remained a fugitive in the border areas straddling Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. From its Langley offices, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center asked the Islamabad station for help recruiting agents who might be able to track Kasi down. Case officers signed up a group of Afghan tribal fighters who had worked for the CIA during the 1980s guerrilla war against Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan.
The family-based team of paid agents, given the cryptonym FD/TRODPINT, set up residences around the city of Kandahar. They were rugged, bearded fighters -- often in teams of a dozen or so -- who rolled around southern Afghanistan in four-wheel-drive vehicles, blending comfortably into the region's militarized tribal society.
In the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the CIA carried out a secret but ultimately unsuccessful manhunt for bin Laden. It was based at first on the band of Afghan tribal agents, and later expanded to include other agents and allies, especially the legendary guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. But the search became mired in mutual frustrations, near misses and increasingly bitter policy disputes in Washington between the Clinton White House and the CIA.
An ambitious plan for the TRODPINT team to kidnap bin Laden from his bed and hold him in an Afghan cave telegraphed the CIA's audacity, despite what operatives saw as a restrictive mandate from the president. At the same time, the CIA's inability to pinpoint bin Laden's location or capture him drew pointed questions from the White House about the agency's effectiveness.
This account, a detailed history of the pursuit of bin Laden before the terrorist attacks of 2001, describes for the first time aborted CIA plans to seize bin Laden at his Kandahar farm, another attempt to rain Katyusha rockets on him, and the final struggle to work with Massoud, all in vain. It is based on several dozen interviews with participants and officials in the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as documents, private records and memoirs about the CIA covert action program in Afghanistan, which was designed in the 1980s to expel occupying Soviet forces and later to capture bin Laden or disrupt his activities.
When the TRODPINT team set out to find Kasi, one or two senior family members handled the face-to-face contacts with the CIA. Case officers working from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad supplied them with cash, assault rifles, land mines, motorcycles, trucks, listening devices and secure communications equipment.
Together they concocted a bold plan to capture Kasi and fly him to the United States for trial. If the Afghan agents found Kasi, they would detain him until U.S. Special Forces secretly flew into Afghanistan to bundle the fugitive away. With the TRODPINT team acting as spotters, the CIA identified a desert landing strip near Kandahar that could be used for this clandestine American extraction flight. The White House approved the plan, and President Bill Clinton secretly dispatched a Special Forces team to southern Afghanistan to confirm the coordinates and suitability of the makeshift airstrip.
In the end, Kasi was found elsewhere. In late May 1997, an ethnic Baluch man walked into the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, and told a clerk he had information about Kasi. He was taken to a young CIA officer who was chief of base in the city. The informant handed her an application for a Pakistani driver's license recently filled out by Kasi under an alias. It contained a photo and a thumbprint that confirmed Kasi's identity.
Three weeks later, a team of CIA officers, Pakistani intelligence officers and FBI agents arrested Kasi at a Pakistani hotel, flew him to the United States and jailed him for trial. (He was convicted of murder in 1997, sentenced to death in 1998 and executed in Virginia on Nov. 14, 2002.)
In the weeks that followed Kasi's arrest, a new question was raised inside the CIA's Counterterrorist Center: What would become of their elaborately equipped and financed TRODPINT assets? The agents had filed numerous reports about where Kasi might be, but none of these had panned out. Ultimately, the team played no direct role in Kasi's arrest. Despite this questionable record, it seemed a shame to just cut them loose, some Langley officers believed.
The Hunt Begins
At CIA headquarters, the unit set up to track Kasi was located in the Counterterrorist Center. A few partitions away was another small cluster of analysts and operators who made up what the CIA officially called the "bin Laden issue unit."
The unit had been created early in 1996 to watch bin Laden, who was then living in Sudan. By that point, the United States had decided for security reasons to close the embassy and CIA station in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, where officers had previously been collecting intelligence about bin Laden's financial support for Islamic radicals in North Africa and elsewhere. In the spring of 1996, Sudan yielded to international pressure to expel bin Laden. The Saudi found sanctuary in Afghanistan in May.
The CIA had no station or base in Afghanistan, however, and it had no paid agents in the country at the time, other than those hunting for Kasi near Kandahar and a few loose contacts working on drug trafficking and recovering Stinger shoulder-fired missiles, according to Tom Simons, then U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, whose account is supported by several other U.S. officials familiar with the CIA's Afghan agent roster.
Back at Langley, the bin Laden unit transmitted reports regularly to policymakers in classified channels about threats issued by bin Laden against American targets -- via faxed leaflets, television interviews and underground pamphlets. The CIA's analysts described bin Laden at this time as an active, dangerous financier of Islamic extremism, but they saw him as more a money source than a terrorist operator.
To senior career officers in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, the TRODPINT tribal team now beckoned as a way to watch bin Laden in Afghanistan. The paid Afghan agents could monitor or harass the Saudi up close, under CIA control -- and perhaps capture him for trial, if the White House approved such an operation. Operators and analysts in the bin Laden unit argued passionately for more active measures against him. Jeff O'Connell, then director of the Counterterrorist Center, and his deputy, Paul Pillar, agreed in the summer of 1997 to hand them control of the TRODPINT agent team, complete with its weapons and spy gear.
As bin Laden's bloodcurdling televised threats against Americans increased in number and menace during 1997, the CIA -- with approval from Clinton's White House -- turned from just watching bin Laden toward making plans to capture him.
Working with lawyers at Langley in late 1997 and early 1998, the TRODPINT agents' CIA controllers modified the original Kasi capture plan -- with its secret air strip for extraction flights -- so it could be used to seize bin Laden and prosecute him, or kill him if he violently resisted arrest.
A long and frustrating hunt for bin Laden had now formally begun.
During the three years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the hunt would eventually involve several dozen local paid CIA agents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a secret commando team drawn from Uzbek special forces, another drawn from retired Pakistani special forces, and a deepening intelligence alliance with Massoud, the northern Afghan guerrilla leader. Despite these varied efforts, bin Laden continually eluded their grasp.
Years later, those involved in the secret campaign against bin Laden still disagree about why it failed -- and who is to blame.
On the front lines in Pakistan and Central Asia, working-level CIA officers felt they had a rare, urgent sense of the menace bin Laden posed before Sept. 11. Yet a number of controversial proposals to attack bin Laden were turned down by superiors at Langley or the White House, who feared the plans were poorly developed, wouldn't work or would embroil the United States in Afghanistan's then-obscure civil war. At other times, plans to track or attack bin Laden were delayed or watered down after stalemated debates inside Clinton's national security cabinet.
At Langley, CIA officers sometimes saw the Clinton cabinet as overly cautious, obsessed with legalities and unwilling to take political risks in Afghanistan by arming bin Laden's Afghan enemies and directly confronting the radical Taliban Islamic militia. But at the Clinton White House, senior policymakers and counterterrorism analysts sometimes saw the CIA's efforts in Afghanistan as timid, na?ve, self-protecting and ineffective.
Some of the agency's efforts involved intelligence collection about bin Laden's whereabouts; others grew into covert actions designed to capture or kill leaders of bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Both tracks were carried out in deep secrecy mainly by career clandestine service officers in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and the Near East Division of the agency's Directorate of Operations.
Audacious Plans Take Root
As the TRODPINT team began its work on bin Laden early in 1998, a federal grand jury in New York opened a secret investigation into the Saudi's terrorist-financing activity. The probe had been prompted by a defector from bin Laden's inner circle, financial evidence from terrorist attacks in Egypt and elsewhere, and old files from earlier terrorist cases in New York. No one outside the Justice Department was supposed to know about the grand jury's work, but it began to leak to officials involved with the CIA's planning.
CIA officers working from Islamabad, led by station chief Gary Schroen, assumed in early 1998 that if their agents captured bin Laden in southern Afghanistan, a U.S. grand jury would quickly indict him. If not, the CIA or the Clinton White House would ask Egypt or Saudi Arabia to take custody of bin Laden for trial. Schroen kept asking the Counterterrorist Center at Langley, "Do we have an indictment?" The answers, according to several officials involved, were cryptic: Bin Laden was "indictable," the Islamabad station was told.
The TRODPINT team developed a detailed plan to hold bin Laden in a cave in southern Afghanistan for 30 days before American Special Forces flew in secretly to take him away. The agents located a cave where they could hide out comfortably. They assured their CIA handlers that they had stored enough food and water in the cave to keep bin Laden healthy during his kidnapping.
By imprisoning bin Laden in the cave, the agents hoped to ease his extraction. If enough time passed after bin Laden's initial capture, al Qaeda's agitated lieutenants would be less alert when the Americans flew in to bundle bin Laden off. Also, the detention would allow time to persuade either a U.S. lawyer or a foreign government to hand down criminal charges.
If CIA officers and their paid agents detained bin Laden for an eventual trial in the United States, they would be operating under the authority of Executive Order 12333, which allowed the CIA to aid the pursuit of international fugitives. The measure was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and renewed by successive presidents. A thick archive of Justice Department memoranda and court opinions upheld the right of American agents to abduct fugitives overseas and return them to U.S. courts in many instances.
At the same time, Executive Order 12333 banned assassination by the CIA or its agents. [See related article.] CIA officers met with their TRODPINT agents in Pakistan to emphasize that their plan to capture bin Laden and hold him in the Afghan cave could not turn into an assassination. "I want to reinforce this with you," one officer told the Afghans, as he later described the meeting in cables to Langley and Washington. "You are to capture him alive."
Physical and Political Risks
As they refined their kidnapping plans in the spring of 1998, the bin Laden unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center looked with rising interest at Tarnak Farm. This was a compound of perhaps 100 acres that lay isolated on a stretch of desert about three miles from the Kandahar airport. On some nights, bin Laden slept at Tarnak with one of his wives. He chatted on his satellite phone in this period and lived fairly openly, protected by bodyguards. The question arose: Could the CIA's tribal agents be equipped to raid bin Laden's house and take him from his bed?
Tarnak's main compound was encircled by a mud-brick wall about 10 feet high. Inside were about 80 modest one-story and two-story structures. Flat plains of sand and sagebrush extended for miles. Kandahar's crowded bazaars lay half an hour's drive away.
CIA officers based in Islamabad spent long hours with the TRODPINT team's leaders to devise a plan to attack Tarnak in the middle of the night. The Afghans had scouted and mapped Tarnak up close; the CIA had photographed it from satellites.
The agents organized an attack party of about 30 fighters. They identified a staging point where they would assemble all of their vehicles. They would drive to a secondary rallying point a few miles from Tarnak.
The main raiding party would walk across the desert at around 2 a.m. They had scouted a path that avoided minefields and had deep gullies to mask their approach. They would breach the outer wall by crawling through a drainage ditch on the airport side.
A second group planned to roll quietly toward the front gate in two Jeeps. They would carry silenced pistols to take out two guards at the entrance. Meanwhile the other attackers would have burst into the several small huts where bin Laden's wives slept. When they found the tall, bearded Saudi, they would cuff him, drag him toward the gate, and load him into a Land Cruiser. Other vehicles back at the rally point would approach in sequence and they would all drive together to the provisioned cave about 30 miles away.
Satellite photography and reports from the ground indicated that there were dozens of women and children living at Tarnak. Langley asked for detailed explanations from members of the tribal team about how they planned to minimize harm to bystanders during their assault.
The CIA officers involved thought their agents were serious, semiprofessional fighters who were trying to cooperate as best they could. Yet "if you understood the Afghan mind-set and the context," recalled an officer involved, it was clear that in any raid the Afghans would probably fire indiscriminately at some point.
In Washington, Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism coordinator, drove out to Langley late in the spring of 1998 to meet with his CIA counterpart, O'Connell, who briefed him on the details of the Tarnak attack plan and how much it would cost. O'Connell also outlined the political risks, including the potential problem of civilian casualties.
Members of the White House counterterrorism team reacted skeptically. Their sense was that the TRODPINT agents were old anti-Soviet mujaheddin who had long since passed their peak fighting years and were probably milking the CIA for money while minimizing the risks they took on the ground. If they did go through with a Tarnak raid, some White House officials feared, women and children would die, and bin Laden would probably escape. Such a massacre would undermine U.S. interests in the Muslim world and elsewhere.
The CIA's top leaders reviewed the proposed raid in June 1998. The discussion revealed similar doubts among senior officers in the Directorate of Operations. In the end, as CIA Director George J. Tenet described it to colleagues years later, the CIA's relevant chain of command -- Jack Downing, then chief of the Directorate of Operations, his deputy James Pavitt, O'Connell and Pillar -- all recommended against going forward with the Tarnak raid.
By then there was no enthusiasm for the plan in the Clinton White House, either. "Am I missing something? Aren't these people going to be mowed down on their way to the wall?" Clarke asked his White House and CIA colleagues sarcastically, one official recalled.
Tenet never formally presented the raid plan for Clinton's approval, according to several officials involved.
The decision was cabled to Islamabad. The tribal team's plans should be set aside, perhaps to be revived later. Meanwhile the agents were encouraged to continue to look for opportunities to catch bin Laden away from Tarnak, where among other things, an ambush attempt would carry relatively little risk of civilian deaths.
Some of the working-level CIA officers involved in the planning reacted bitterly to the decision. They believed the kidnapping plan could succeed.
A Renewed Urgency
Less than two months later, on Aug. 7, 1998, two teams of al Qaeda suicide bombers launched synchronized attacks against two U.S. embassies in Africa. In Nairobi, Kenya, 213 people died and 4,000 were injured. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the toll was 11 dead and 85 wounded. Within months, the New York federal grand jury previously investigating bin Laden delivered an indictment of the Saudi for directing the strikes, among other alleged crimes.
Inside Langley's Counterterrorist Center, some CIA analysts and officers were devastated and angry as they watched the televised images of death and rescue in Africa. One of the bin Laden unit's analysts confronted Tenet. "You are responsible for those deaths," she said, "because you didn't act on the information we had, when we could have gotten him" through the Tarnak raid, one official involved recalled her saying. The woman was "crying and sobbing, and it was a very rough scene," the official said.
Tenet stood there and took it. He was a boisterous, emotional man, and he did not shrink from honest confrontation, some of his CIA colleagues felt. After the Africa attacks, Tenet redoubled his pressure on the bin Laden unit's covert campaign to find their target.
By then, however, bin Laden had dramatically increased his security. He discarded his traceable satellite phone and moved much more stealthily around Afghanistan.
For those who had worked on the Tarnak raid plan, the questions lingered. Why had the CIA's leaders turned the idea down?
Down in the trenches of a bureaucracy enveloped in secrecy, the resentments festered, amplified by rumors, office grievances and the intensity of the daily grind.
On Aug. 20, acting on intelligence reports of a scheduled meeting of bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders, Clinton ordered 75 cruise missiles launched from a submarine in the Arabian Sea against a network of jihadist training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The attack killed at least 21 Pakistani volunteers but missed bin Laden.
'Weekend Warriors'
By mid-1999, the sense both at the White House and in Tenet's 7th-floor suite in CIA headquarters at Langley was that the Counterterrorist Center had grown too dependent on the TRODPINT tribal agents. One of Tenet's aides referred to them derisively as "weekend warriors," middle-aged and now prosperous Afghan fighters with a few Kalashnikovs in their closets.
At the White House, among the few national security officials who knew of the agents' existence, the attitude evolved from "hopeful skepticism to outright mockery," as one official recalled it.
At one point the agents moved north to Kabul's outskirts and rented a farm as a base. They moved in and out of the Afghan capital to scout homes where bin Laden occasionally stayed. They developed a new set of plans in which they would strike a Kabul house where bin Laden slept, snatch the Saudi from his bed and retreat from the city in Jeeps. The CIA supplied explosives to the agents because their plan called for them to blow up small bridges as they made their escape.
The agents never acted. Their rented farm was a working vineyard. William B. Milam, then U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, who was briefed on the operation, asked his CIA colleagues sarcastically, "So what are they waiting for -- the wine to ferment?"
To shake up the hunt, Tenet appointed a fast-track executive assistant from the 7th floor, known to his colleagues as Rich, to take charge of the bin Laden unit. Tenet also named Cofer Black, a longtime case officer in Africa who had tracked bin Laden in Sudan, as the Counterterrorist Center's new director. The bin Laden unit and its chief reported directly to Black; during the next two years they would work closely together.
When Black took over, the bin Laden unit had about 25 professionals. Most of them were women, and two-thirds had backgrounds as analysts. They called themselves "the Manson Family," after the crazed convicted murderer Charles Manson, because they had acquired a reputation within the CIA for wild alarmism about the rising al Qaeda threat.
Their reports described over and over bin Laden's specific, open threats to inflict mass casualties against Americans. They could not understand why no one else seemed to take the threat as seriously as they did. They pleaded with colleagues that bin Laden was not like the old leftist, theatrical terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s who wanted, in terrorism expert Brian Jenkins's famous maxim, "a lot of people watching but not a lot of people dead." Bin Laden wanted many American civilians to die, they warned. They could be dismissive of colleagues who did not share their sense of urgency.
"The rest of the CIA and the intelligence community looked on our efforts as eccentric and at times fanatic," recalled the then-chief of the bin Laden unit. "It was a cult," agreed a U.S. official who dealt with them. "Jonestown," said a second person involved, asked to sum up the unit's atmosphere. "I outlawed Kool-Aid."
Working with the Islamabad station, the bin Laden unit pushed for a surge in recruitments of agents who could operate or travel in Afghanistan.
Some of those were informal sources, helping the CIA because of their political opposition to the Taliban. Others were recruited onto the CIA's payroll. Case officers working the Afghan borderlands began to recruit a few Taliban military leaders, including a brigade-level commander in eastern Afghanistan. One young case officer operating from Islamabad recruited six or seven Taliban commanders operating in the eastern region. Yet none of the recruited agents was close to bin Laden. The CIA could not recruit a single agent inside the core al Qaeda terrorist leadership.
Black knew that the CIA was in trouble "without penetrations" of bin Laden's organization, as a classified Counterterrorist Center briefing to Clinton's national security aides put it late in 1999. "While we need to disrupt [terrorist] operations . . . we need also to recruit sources," even though "recruiting terrorist sources is difficult."
Looking for Help
The CIA had the best agent coverage around Kandahar. Even so, its classified tracking reports from multiple sources always seemed a day or two behind bin Laden's movements. The lack of a source in al Qaeda's inner circle made forecasting the Saudi's hour-to-hour itinerary impossible. Moreover, Kandahar was the Taliban's military stronghold. The Taliban had provided safe haven to bin Laden in Afghanistan in exchange for money and al Qaeda's troops. Even if the CIA pinpointed bin Laden downtown, there was no easy way to organize a capture operation; the attacking force would face strong opposition from Taliban units.
In the summer of 1999, a truck bomb detonated outside the Kandahar house of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. Afterward, bin Laden used his wealth to build new compounds for the Taliban leader. In Omar's home province of Uruzgan, bin Laden built a new training complex for foreign al Qaeda volunteers.
The CIA ordered satellite imagery and agent reports to document this camp. Officers hoped bin Laden might wander in for an inspection. At one point a team of four or five Afghan agents from the original TRODPINT group approached the camp at night. Al Qaeda guards opened fire and wounded one of them, they reported.
Kabul was a relatively easy place to spy. The Afghan capital was a sprawling and ethnically diverse city, a place of strangers and travelers. At one point the CIA believed bin Laden had two wives in Kabul. He would visit their houses periodically. The Islamabad station recruited an Afghan who worked as a security guard at one of the Kabul houses bin Laden used. But the agent was so far down the al Qaeda information chain that he never knew when bin Laden was going to turn up. He was summoned to duty just as the Saudi's Jeeps rolled in.
Bin Laden's travels within Afghanistan followed a somewhat predictable path. He would often ride west on the Ring Road from Kandahar, then loop north and east through Ghowr province. The CIA mapped guesthouses in obscure Ghowr, one of Afghanistan's most isolated and impoverished regions. From there the Saudi usually moved east to Kabul and then sometimes on to Jalalabad before turning south again toward Kandahar.
Americans who studied this track called it "the circuit." At the White House, counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke tried to develop logarithmic formulas that attempted to predict where bin Laden was likely to move next when he was at any given point.
The CIA's bin Laden unit sought to trap bin Laden out of "KKJ," an insider's acronym for the densely populated cities of Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad. They hoped to catch him in lightly populated rural areas. Yet they struggled to find a convincing plan.
They knew that on the ground in Afghanistan by the summer of 1999 there was only one experienced, proven guerrilla leader waging war and collecting intelligence day in and day out against the Taliban, bin Laden and their radical Islamic allies. This was the legendary Tajik guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, a man with a long and mutually frustrating history with the CIA.
From 1997 onward, Massoud's Northern Alliance militia forces waged a brutal, existential war against the Taliban north of Kabul, often battling directly against bin Laden's Arab, Chechen and Pakistani volunteers. They knew bin Laden not only as a preacher, financier and terrorist planner, but sometimes as a military field commander who wandered near their battle lines.
There were serious doubts inside Clinton's cabinet about the history of drug trafficking and human rights violations among Massoud's Northern Alliance forces. But at the CIA, in the Counterterrorist Center, analysts and officers in the bin Laden unit knew one thing for certain: Massoud was the enemy of their enemy.
A deeper, more active, more lethal alliance with Massoud, these CIA officers argued, offered by far the best chance to capture or kill bin Laden before he struck again.
Staff writer Griff Witte contributed to this report.

NEXT: The CIA and Massoud.

? 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Policy Disputes Over Hunt Paralyzed Clinton's Aides
By Steve Coll
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page A17
Between 1998 and 2000, the CIA and President Bill Clinton's national security team were caught up in paralyzing policy disputes as they secretly debated the legal permissions for covert operations against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
The debates left both White House counterterrorism analysts and CIA career operators frustrated and at times confused about what kinds of operations could be carried out, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials and lawyers who were directly involved.
There was little question that under U.S. law it was permissible to kill bin Laden and his top aides, at least after the evidence showed they were responsible for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. The ban on assassinations -- contained in a 1981 executive order by President Ronald Reagan -- did not apply to military targets, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel had previously ruled in classified opinions. Bin Laden's Tarnak Farm and other terrorist camps in Afghanistan were legitimate military targets under this definition, White House lawyers agreed.
Also, the assassination ban did not apply to attacks carried out in preemptive self-defense -- when it seemed likely that the target was planning to strike the United States. Clearly bin Laden qualified under this standard as well.
Clinton had demonstrated his willingness to kill bin Laden, without any pretense of seeking his arrest, when he ordered the cruise missile strikes on an eastern Afghan camp in August 1998, after the CIA obtained intelligence that bin Laden might be there for a meeting of al Qaeda leaders.
Yet the secret legal authorizations Clinton signed after this failed missile strike required the CIA to make a good faith effort to capture bin Laden for trial, not kill him outright.
Beginning in the summer of 1998, Clinton signed a series of top secret memos authorizing the CIA or its agents to use lethal force, if necessary, in an attempt to capture bin Laden and several top lieutenants and return them to the United States to face trial.
From Director George J. Tenet on down, the CIA's senior managers wanted the White House lawyers to be crystal clear about what was permissible in the field. They were conditioned by history -- the CIA assassination scandals of the 1970s, the Iran-contra affair of the 1980s -- to be cautious about legal permissions emanating from the White House. Earlier in his career, Tenet had served as staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and director of intelligence issues at the White House, roles steeped in the Washington culture of oversight and careful legality.
Tenet and his senior CIA colleagues demanded that the White House lay out rules of engagement for capturing bin Laden in writing, and that they be signed by Clinton. Then, with such detailed authorizations in hand, every one of the CIA officers who handed a gun or a map to an Afghan agent could be assured that he or she was operating legally.
This was the role of the Memorandum of Notification, as it was called. It was typically seven or eight pages long, written in the form of a presidential decision memo. It began with a statement about how bin Laden and his aides had attacked the United States. The memo made clear the president was aware of the risks he was assuming as he sent the CIA into action.
Some of the most sensitive language concerned the specific authorization to use deadly force. Clinton's national security aides said they wanted to encourage the CIA to carry out an effective operation against bin Laden, not to burden the agency with constraints or doubts. Yet Clinton's aides did not want authorizations that could be interpreted by Afghan agents as an unrestricted license to kill. For one thing, the Justice Department signaled that it would oppose such language if it was proposed for Clinton's signature.
The compromise wording, in a succession of bin Laden-focused memos, always expressed some ambiguity about how and when deadly force could be used in an operation designed to take bin Laden into custody. Typical language, recalled one official involved, instructed the CIA to "apprehend with lethal force as authorized."
At the CIA, officers and supervisors agonized over these abstract phrases. They worried that if an operation in Afghanistan went badly, they would be accused of having acted outside the memo's scope. Over time, recriminations grew between the CIA and the White House.
It was common in Clinton's cabinet and among his National Security Council aides to see the CIA as much too cautious, paralyzed by fears of legal and political risks. At Langley, this criticism rankled. The CIA's senior managers believed officials at the White House wanted to have it both ways: They liked to blame the agency for its supposed lack of aggression, yet they sent over classified legal memos full of wiggle words.
Clinton's covert policy against bin Laden pursued two goals at the same time. He ordered submarines equipped with cruise missiles to patrol secretly under ocean waters off Pakistan in the hope that CIA spotters would one day identify bin Laden's location confidently enough to warrant a deadly missile strike.
But Clinton also authorized the CIA to carry out operations that legally required the agency's officers to plan in almost every instance to capture bin Laden alive and bring him to the United States to face trial.
This meant the CIA officers had to arrange in advance for detention facilities, extraction flights and other elaborate contingencies -- even if they expected that bin Laden would probably die in the arrest attempt. These requirements made operational planning much more cumbersome, the CIA officers contended.
In fashioning this sensitive policy in the midst of an impeachment crisis that lasted into early 1999, Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, struggled to forge a consensus within the White House national security team. Among other things, he had to keep on board a skeptical Attorney General Janet Reno and her Justice Department colleagues, who were deeply invested in law enforcement approaches to terrorism, according to senior officials involved.
As the months passed, Clinton signed new memos in which the language, while still ambiguous, made the use of lethal force by the CIA's Afghan agents more likely, according to officials involved. At first the CIA was permitted to use lethal force only in the course of a legitimate attempt to make an arrest. Later the memos allowed for a pure lethal attack if an arrest was not possible. Still, the CIA was required to plan all its agent missions with an arrest in mind.
Some CIA managers chafed at the White House instructions. The CIA received "no written word nor verbal order to conduct a lethal action" against bin Laden before Sept. 11, one official involved recalled. "The objective was to render this guy to law enforcement." In these operations, the CIA had to recruit agents "to grab [bin Laden] and bring him to a secure place where we can turn him over to the FBI. . . . If they had said 'lethal action' it would have been a whole different kettle of fish, and much easier."
Berger later recalled his frustration about this hidden debate. Referring to the military option in the two-track policy, he said at a 2002 congressional hearing: "It was no question, the cruise missiles were not trying to capture him. They were not law enforcement techniques."
The overriding trouble was, whether they arrested bin Laden or killed him, they first had to find him.

? 2004 The Washington Post Company

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>> OUR FRIENDS IN LATIN AMERICA...

Missing a Voice for the Americas
By Marcela Sanchez
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, February 19, 2004; 10:34 PM
M. Delal Baer was one of those unusual individuals in this city who walked her talk, and did so perfectly in two languages and two distinct cultures. She understood Mexican idiosyncrasy better than most Americans and American peculiarities better than most Mexicans, and used her wit and enthusiasm to explain them both to anyone who didn't.
Her insight could also be her frustration -- she knew too well the events and personalities that kept the two nations apart. She channeled this frustration into her work as founder of the Mexico program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and as a frequent columnist and commentator for media both here and in Mexico. She became the ideal source for understanding the Bush-Fox era -- that is, until last week, when cancer took her life. Baer was only 51.
She was a proud Republican, yet not an apologist for the Bush administration. She had an eclectic group of friends --- Mexican, American, liberal, conservative. I was not among them, yet she always made me feel I could count on her attentive and respectful ear when we talked, usually after, of course, she shared the latest about her beloved adopted daughter from Mexico.
Delal was ever the optimist, seeing opportunities where others saw obstacles. And now that it is clearer that Latin America is not a priority for this White House, her departure seems even more untimely. While many are yelling and screaming because, they insist, this is the time for more, not less, engagement, Delal would probably see it differently, and not simply because of her Republican allegiance.
That was her style. Only a few months ago, she turned on its head the common complaint that this country treats Latin America as its "back yard.'' In an article written for the Mexican daily Reforma, she noted, with a fresh earnestness, that in U.S. popular culture the back yard is the "most intimate and dear place of the home ... I wish the United States and Mexico could be back yard friends!"
The day she died, Feb. 11, was the day Secretary of State Colin L. Powell dumped some unwanted but not surprising dirt in the hemispheric back yard by publicly acknowledging that the administration was proposing to cut U.S. aid to Latin America in 2005 to help provide more funds for "higher priorities ... of a more serious nature.''
There you have it, many said. Here was proof that Bush and his senior officials have been disingenuous about their intentions to change Washington's attitude toward its neighbors in Latin America. While others lamented in shock and dismay, I could almost hear Delal urging them not to waste their precious time. There are just too many new realities to deal with.
If Bush's focus on the war on terrorism and his re-election leaves the White House with less time for Latin America, she would be the first to challenge policymakers south of the border to use their time and efforts more wisely.
She might have encouraged Mexican legislators to shift their attention to Capitol Hill, for example. Why not spend time courting the likes of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), considered by some as Powell's potential successor if Bush is re-elected? The senator had these words for the secretary of state last week: "Mexico's importance to our prosperity and security continues to be misunderstood and undervalued by policy-makers in both the executive and legislative branches."
And while some might approach Lugar and the rest of the Hill, why stop there? Latin American policy-makers should reach outside the Beltway and, in this critical election year, work with Latino leaders to address issues that concern them both. Immigration, money transfers and regional development need not be discussed only over dinner at Washington's finest restaurants. Mexican president Vicente Fox's past visits to the United States were a start. Latin American leaders must start tapping the power of 13 percent of the U.S. population if they expect to move their issues beyond electoral rhetoric.
Delal would have seen the outrage over Powell's latest comments as little more than the "outdated and misplaced sensitivities" she felt had so consumed North-South dialogue. She would have much preferred to hear about the challenge that his words posed and the kind of action leaders were willing to take in the spirit of new thinking and real progress. And without a doubt, if no one called for such action, she would have.

Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.


? 2004 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
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Se Acaba el Dinero y no se Toman Medidas Dr?sticas

Las pensiones, de camino al ba?l de los recuerdos
Una de cada tres personas en Am?rica Latina y el Caribe no dispone de una pensi?n o de alg?n tipo de ingreso que le permita vivir dignamente. En el hemisferio son pocos los casos de pa?ses con sistemas de jubilaci?n con coberturas mayores al 50 por ciento de la poblaci?n econ?micamente activa. Si no se toman medidas pronto, la pensi?n ser? un tema del que nunca hablar?n nuestros hijos.

Isidro L?pez
Tiempos del Mundo

Una tercera parte de las personas mayores de 65 a?os en el hemisferio no dispone de ning?n tipo de ingreso o pensi?n, seg?n expone un informe de la Organizaci?n de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) y de la Comisi?n Econ?mica para Am?rica Latina y el Caribe (Cepal).

El documento "Las personas mayores en Am?rica Latina y el Caribe", califica de desiguales y deficientes las condiciones de seguridad econ?mica de esta poblaci?n y agrega que en las ?reas urbanas dos de cada cinco adultos mayores disponen de ingresos provenientes de la seguridad social, mientras en las zonas rurales apenas uno de cada cinco.

Tambi?n establece que una proporci?n muy importante de esta poblaci?n es econ?micamente activa, contrariamente a lo que ocurre en los pa?ses desarrollados. El informe concluye que desde la mitad del siglo XX las tasas de participaci?n de los adultos mayores en la fuerza laboral disminuyeron en forma sostenida, caracter?stica que cambi? a partir de la d?cada de los 90 en la mayor?a de los pa?ses.

Esta tendencia a una mayor participaci?n en la fuerza laboral se explicar?a, seg?n la Cepal, por las reformas al sistema de pensiones, espec?ficamente el aumento de la edad para jubilar y la exigencia de mayor cantidad de a?os de cotizaci?n para acceder a la pensi?n.

El bajo monto de las pensiones o la necesidad de compensar ingresos familiares para enfrentar la ?poca de crisis son otros de los factores que inciden para que los adultos mayores busquen a toda costa permanecer activos econ?micamente. En este contexto, la actividad econ?mica de las personas mayores est? relacionada directamente con la cobertura de la seguridad social, decreciendo a medida que aumenta la proporci?n de los que acceden a una pensi?n.

"Por lo tanto, la alta participaci?n de los adultos mayores en la fuerza laboral no responder?a necesariamente a una opci?n voluntaria, sino m?s bien a la necesidad de garantizar un m?nimo de recursos necesarios para sobrevivir", afirma el estudio. En el caso de los pa?ses de menor desarrollo, las personas mayores se insertan en el sector de empleos informales, que no cuenta con pensi?n ni sistemas de salud, lo que los sigue haciendo altamente vulnerables.

De acuerdo con este estudio, las cifras sobre la cobertura actual de la seguridad social en la regi?n revela preocupantes insuficiencias. De diez pa?ses analizados, solo Uruguay y Chile alcanzan a proteger a m?s de un 50 por ciento de su poblaci?n activa, mientras que Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador y Venezuela cubren al 30 por ciento de sus trabajadores, mientras en Bolivia Paraguay y Per? la cobertura no supera el 10 por ciento.

No exentos de cuestionamientos

La seguridad social y especialmente el pago de jubilaciones y pensiones es una cuesti?n de Estado en el Uruguay, naci?n con una arraigada tradici?n asistencialista y pionera en el continente en la atenci?n del bienestar de las generaciones de trabajadores jubilados. Este pa?s tiene una escasa poblaci?n y un alto porcentaje de adultos mayores. El presupuesto para atender estas obligaciones insume m?s de la mitad de los recursos totales del Estado y hace ya tres d?cadas que se ha transformado en una espada de Damocles para la sociedad uruguaya.

La poblaci?n econ?micamente activa ronda los 1.2 millones, en tanto son m?s de 700.000 los jubilados y pensionados. Hace cuatro d?cadas, la proporci?n entre activos y pasivos era de 4 a 1, tres veces superior a la de 2003, y entonces el sistema era floreciente y generoso.

Empero, la par?lisis econ?mica que afect? al Uruguay desde 1955 en adelante y el creciente d?ficit estatal, llevaron al saqueo oficial del sistema previsional. A ello se sum? la tendencia decreciente de la masa laboral, la evasi?n, el trabajo en negro y los bajos salarios de un pa?s en decadencia econ?mica. Luego de a?os de t?midos intentos del poder pol?tico por enfrentar el problema, en 1995 el Parlamento aprob? el sistema mixto de seguridad social, manteniendo el viejo r?gimen para los asalariados mayores de 40 a?os, obligando al resto a destinar parte de sus aportes a un fondo individual de ahorro que desde entonces est? a cargo de cuatro administradoras privadas, obligadas a garantizar la seguridad de esos ahorros y cierto porcentaje de rentabilidad. A fines de 2003, eran unos 635.000 los afiliados al sistema de jubilaci?n privado (sistema Afap), de ellos un 52 por ciento eran cotizantes habituales que promediaban un ahorro mensual de cerca de 17 d?lares.

Tras ocho a?os de vigencia, el sistema mixto aplicado en Uruguay est? superando - con mucha incertidumbre desde junio 2002- el tremendo golpe que signific? la crisis financiera y bancaria de ese a?o y la situaci?n de insolvencia del gobierno. Por prescripci?n de la ley 16.713, el 57 por ciento de los fondos de ahorro previsional estaba invertido en t?tulos de deuda del gobierno.

En los ?ltimos dos a?os, la rentabilidad real de los ahorros previsionales cay? en t?rminos de d?lar por la desvalorizaci?n de los t?tulos y otros instrumentos de deuda estatal. La recesi?n, la ca?da del empleo y la baja en el n?mero de cotizantes tambi?n afectaron sensiblemente al fondo de ahorro previsional (FAP).

Entre junio y diciembre de 2002 su valor cay? de 1.050 millones de d?lares a 750 millones de d?lares. Sin embargo, el fin de la larga recesi?n econ?mica y la tibia reactivaci?n de la econom?a del segundo semestre de 2003 acrecentaron el n?mero de afiliados cotizantes y aumentaron sensiblemente el monto total del FAP.

A fines de diciembre, el presidente del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), Enrique Iglesias, transmiti? en Montevideo a dirigentes de los partidos pol?ticos Colorado y Blanco - que se han alternado en el poder desde la fundaci?n del Estado uruguayo- su "preocupaci?n por los planteos reformistas" del sistema Afap que se comenzaron a esbozar el a?o pasado, pues la reforma previsional aplicada en Uruguay "ha sido un avance y un paso adelante que no debe ser modificado". Desde su instauraci?n, el sistema de jubilaci?n privada fue objetado por sectores de la izquierda pol?tica.

El movimiento obrero sindicalizado, a trav?s del Equipo de Representaci?n de los Trabajadores (ERT) ha sido el m?s serio cuestionador del sistema. Enrique Murro, dirigente obrero, se ha transformado en estratega y l?der de una alternativa concreta al sistema actual. La propuesta alternativa presentada por el sindicalismo en 1999 surgi? del ERT.

En el seminario regional de la Organizaci?n Internacional del Trabajo (OIT) realizado en Sao Paulo, Brasil, en septiembre pasado, el informe de Murro concluye que hay posibilidades reales "de realizar (en el sistema de seguridad social Afap) reformas imprescindibles para lograr la justicia social".

Por otra parte, desde su origen hubo dos corrientes te?ricas sobre las prioridades del sistema. Una, monopolizaba el destino del ahorro como seguro intocable; la otra, adem?s, considera que el FAP puede ser factor de desarrollo y servir como capital de inversi?n para el pa?s.

Con prudencia, el gobierno de Jorge Batlle ha impulsado en los ?ltimos meses la utilizaci?n parcial de los recursos de algunas administradoras para financiar fondos de inversi?n de apoyo a la producci?n lechera y arrocera. Ahora, con posibilidades ciertas de ser gobierno, la coalici?n Frente Amplio que candidatea por cuarta vez a Tabar? V?zquez, debate sin acuerdos a la vista, f?rmulas de reforma del sistema que van desde la "nacionalizaci?n" de los recursos del FAP hasta la regulaci?n de las ganancias de las administradoras privadas.
Reformas y contradicciones

Despu?s de pr?cticamente nueve a?os en la agenda del Congreso, el gobierno del presidente brasile?o, Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, consigui? con la aprobaci?n de la reforma del sistema de pensiones, una de las principales victorias del primer a?o de su mandato.

Esto le signific? un desgaste pol?tico y la memoria de que el primer presidente sindicalista de la historia latinoamericana fue quien consigui? la aprobaci?n de una reforma considerada injusta por los trabajadores. "El sistema (de pensiones) est? quebrado; alguien ten?a que tener el coraje de cambiarlo", dijo Lula antes de la votaci?n.

Durante los meses de las votaciones, el mandatario enfrent? protestas que reunieron en dos oportunidades a m?s de 50 mil personas frente al Palacio de Gobierno, marchas y una huelga general indeterminada de empleados p?blicos. Los jueces por su parte, amenazaron con la primera huelga de la historia del Poder Judicial, y negociaron hasta el ?ltimo minuto sus privilegios.

Para ganar, el gobierno realiz? concesiones y la reforma qued? menos ambiciosa, pero cumple a?n su rol de contener el gigantesco d?ficit generado en las cuentas del estado por el sistema de pensiones. Las votaciones fueron negociadas hasta el ?ltimo momento y en varias oportunidades Lula tuvo que ponerse al frente para evitar una derrota.

La reforma aprobada aument? el l?mite de jubilaci?n de los jueces de 75 por ciento a 85,5 por ciento del sueldo m?s alto (cerca de 5.000 d?lares) y aument? el nivel de excepci?n de contribuci?n para los jubilados, una de las novedades de la reforma. El l?mite de jubilaci?n con excepci?n de los jueces y parlamentarios ser? de alrededor de 827 d?lares.

Para recibir un valor mayor ser? necesario participar de fondos complementarios, que ser?n creados este a?o. La reforma aumenta los a?os de trabajo para los empleados p?blicos de 30 a 35 a?os de servicio para los hombres y de 25 a 30 para las mujeres. Los futuros jubilados no podr?n retirarse ganando lo mismo que recib?an cuando trabajaban.

En Brasil, donde el sistema es mixto, el Gobierno no consigui?, sin embargo, que los empleados p?blicos tuvieran las mismas concesiones dadas a los trabajadores de empresas privadas, que reciben bastante menos que los estatales. A partir de ahora pasa a haber l?mites objetivos, combatiendo una distorsi?n que durante mucho tiempo indign? a toda la sociedad, la existencia de super-jubilaciones y super-salarios, seg?n afirm? el ministro de Seguridad Social, Ricardo Berzoini, uno de los m?s elogiados por el presidente, pero el m?s desgastado frente a la opini?n p?blica, tanto que fue transferido a fines de enero de ese ministerio al de Trabajo, para evitar m?s cr?ticas. "La reforma fue hecha para desviar recursos que hoy van al Tesoro Nacional, con garant?a plena, en direcci?n a los fondos privados que, si son mal administrados, ser?n la alegr?a de las bolsas de valores y la tristeza de los jubilados del ma?ana", afirm? Jolimar Correia Pinto, presidente de la Asociaci?n de los Servidores Jubilados del Congreso.

Pero as? como algunos privilegios fueron cortados, muchos tambi?n acabaron pagando el pato por el abuso de algunos, ya que la reforma moviliz? a la clase media a buscar amparo en sistemas privados. La reforma le cost? al oficialista Partido de los Trabajadores (PT) la expulsi?n de dos diputados y de Helo?sa Helena, una senadora de gran popularidad que vot? contra ?sta y la reforma fiscal. El gran conflicto interno del Gobierno fue que justamente Lula y el PT fueron los principales opositores contra esta reforma durante los ocho a?os de gesti?n de Fernando Henrique Cardoso, pero ante el d?ficit que encontraron al llegar al poder fueron obligados a darle su benepl?cito. La aprobaci?n era tambi?n una de las condiciones impuestas al Gobierno por el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) cuando concedi? al Brasil en 2002 un pr?stamo de 30.000 millones de d?lares. Con su implementaci?n, el Gobierno podr? pedir la renovaci?n del acuerdo a fin de a?o, en al caso de que sea necesario.

Preocupante inequidad

En la mayor parte de los pa?ses del hemisferio la cobertura previsional es deficiente. Por ejemplo, en Paraguay tan solo 350.000 personas integran el sistema de jubilaciones, de una poblaci?n econ?micamente activa de 2.500.000 personas. Esto representa apenas el 14 por ciento, que genera un estado de indefensi?n para la mayor?a de los habitantes del pa?s, que en el futuro no tendr?n posibilidades de enfrentar la vida con ingresos asegurados v?a jubilaci?n.

El d?ficit se acent?a en las ?reas rurales, pues menos del dos por ciento de la poblaci?n integra alg?n sistema de cobertura.

El Instituto de Previsi?n Social (IPS), que cuenta con una n?mina de asegurados del orden de 170.000 trabajadores, registra una alta tasa de jubilados con ?nfimas asignaciones: Alrededor de 3.000 personas reciben menos de 24 d?lares mensuales, debido a que no fueron ajustadas sus asignaciones desde que se jubilaron. Pero ah? no termina todo, pues si se busca un poco, se encuentran personas que perciben hasta menos de un d?lar.

La situaci?n no muestra se?ales de mejor?a. Las elevadas tasas de desempleo y la ya alta de ocupaci?n informal que sigue en franco crecimiento, no presentan perspectivas de reversi?n a esta escasa cobertura previsional.

El acceso de los trajabadores informales a una cobertura previsional es una de las m?s acuciantes necesidades. Existen f?rmulas que pueden ser aplicadas, como establecer un determinado monto a ser abonado por los obreros en esta situaci?n, a fin de que puedan contar tanto con determinados servicios m?dicos como a los haberes jubilatorios, luego de ciertos a?os de aporte. Una iniciativa al respecto hab?a sido dise?ada durante gestiones anteriores del IPS.

El Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) dej? entre sus mensajes durante la reciente visita de Shigemitsu Sugisaki, subdirector gerente de este organismo, que Paraguay debe implementar una reforma de la seguridad social. El debate debe darse a fin de encontrar f?rmulas para mejorar tanto la cobertura como la calidad de las prestaciones, pues la simple aplicaci?n de modelos for?neos, que difieren mucho de la estructura paraguaya, pueden ser contraproducentes para la d?bil organizaci?n previsional existente.

Existen varias propuestas con relaci?n a la cobertura previsional. Mientras algunos sectores, en especial empresariales, pretenden una modificaci?n tendiente a liberar el sistema y fomentar la participaci?n privada, otros sectores, como el de los gremios de trabajadores, insisten en que la reforma debe ser de gesti?n antes que de modelo. El caso es que las figuras de jubilaci?n privada pr?cticamente est?n ausentes en el pa?s, con excepci?n de dos entidades que realizan este tipo de actividades, pero que son a?n muy restringidas en cuanto a n?mero de cotizantes. Adem?s, no existe una normativa espec?fica que regule esta actividad.

En Per? el panorama ya provoc? importantes pol?micas, y es que el diez por ciento del Presupuesto Nacional se utiliza en pagar las pensiones del uno por ciento de la poblaci?n. Es por esto que en este pa?s andino, el sin?nimo de jubilado es: cobro de insulsas pensiones o de peque?os aguinaldos navide?os.

La Oficina Nacional de Pensiones es atrozmente burocr?tica. Los problemas end?micos del jubilado son los m?seros pagos, retrasados cronogramas de cobros y largas colas para retirar su mensualidad. Hace algunos a?os, una de las decisiones que mayores elogios produjo en los pensionistas fue cuando el entonces Seguro Social descentraliz? la atenci?n de la entrega de boletas en las oficinas de cada entidad donde trabaj? el jubilado, as? como que su cobro se hiciera en las diferentes agencias bancarias, gracias a un acuerdo efectuado con dicho organismo estatal.

Hasta hace un tiempo, las pensiones se cobraban en el Centro C?vico de Lima, instituci?n que era pr?cticamente un hormiguero. Hoy algunos jubilados siguen recurriendo al sistema tradicional, se levantan antes de que salga el sol y hacen una larga cola por unas tres horas, pues -a pesar de no estar obligados- les gusta reencontrarse cada fin de mes con sus viejas amistades y se distraen en relaciones p?blicas. Sin embargo, el clamor general de los jubilados es que el sistema de pago deber?a ser como en Espa?a, Uruguay o Estados Unidos, donde las pensiones se les remite con su respectivo cheque a su domicilio, y m?s a?n, que dicho valor es endosable para que parientes cercanos al titular hagan efectivo el monto pensionado. Adem?s, el asegurado puede escoger entre el sistema p?blico y privado.

El Sistema Nacional de Pensiones - creado en 1973- es un r?gimen abierto en donde el Estado fija una pensi?n m?nima (119 d?lares) y una m?xima (247 d?lares). El fondo es intangible desde el a?o 1996. En la actualidad, existen aproximadamente 847.000 aportantes y 382.927 pensionistas. Los requisitos para optar por una pensi?n de jubilaci?n en el r?gimen general es tener 65 a?os para los hombres y 60 a?os para mujeres, haber aportado por 20 a?os con el 13 por ciento del salario. La jubilaci?n o invalidez es un derecho propio para acceder a la pensi?n vitalicia y la viudez u orfandad es un derecho derivado.

El Primer Ministro Carlos Ferrero Costa justific? el hecho de que el 10 por ciento del Presupuesto Nacional se dedique a pagar pensiones al uno por ciento de la poblaci?n. "Debido al aumento de la esperanza de vida y al consecuente envejecimiento de la poblaci?n, en casi todos los pa?ses del mundo, los sistemas de seguridad social atraviesan una ca?da vertiginosa. El Per? no ha sido la excepci?n a esta regla. El sistema sobrevive ?nicamente gracias al subsidio otorgado por el Tesoro P?blico -es decir por la plata de todos los peruanos- que alcanza el 83 por ciento del total de los pagos que se efect?an por pensiones", argument?.

"Existe una notoria inequidad entre los sistemas p?blicos vigentes. Mientras el Sistema Nacional de Pensiones (Ley 19.990) tiene una pensi?n m?xima de 247 d?lares mensuales, los jubilados de la Ley 20.530, reciben un promedio de 365 d?lares, aunque pueden llegar hasta 8.645 d?lares. Los 388 mil pensionistas sujetos a la Ley 19.990 cuestan 805 millones de d?lares, mientras que la de los 295 mil pensionistas de la Ley 20530 cuestan 1.322 millones de d?lares. Descontando el desembolso correspondiente a las planillas de los pensionistas de las empresas p?blicas y organismos aut?nomos, se concluye que en promedio, el Estado gast? m?s del doble de dinero para cubrir la pensi?n de un pensionista de la Ley 20.530 que la de uno de la Ley 19990, y no obstante que los de la 19990 son bastante m?s numerosos", se?al?.

Las empresas privadas de pensiones en el Per? son cuatro: Integra, AFP Horizonte, Uni?n Vida y Profuturo. El sistema funciona como una cuenta personal llamada Cuenta Individual de Capitalizaci?n (CIC), es decir que el ?nico due?o del fondo es el aportante. El sistema fue creado para contribuir al desarrollo y fortalecimiento del sistema de previsi?n social en el ?rea de pensiones, a trav?s de empresas privadas. La instituci?n encargada de fiscalizar y controlar a la Administraci?n de Fondos Privados (AFP) es la Superintendencia de Banca y Seguros (SBS).

Al igual que el sistema nacional de pensiones, hay una pensi?n de jubilaci?n, invalidez, gastos de sepelio y sobrevivencia, el cual otorga una pensi?n a los beneficiarios del afiliado fallecido intempestivamente. Sin embargo, debido a las pobres pensiones que otorga el Estado peruano a los asegurados, es m?s beneficioso optar por una AFP. El tema de la inequidad en el monto de las pensiones es tambi?n tema de debate en Centroam?rica. En Nicaragua, mientras un grupo reducido de altos funcionarios del Estado, incluido el presidente Enrique Bola?os, y el l?der de la oposici?n sandinista, el ex presidente Daniel Ortega, se beneficiaban mensualmente con jugosas pensiones equivalentes a los diez mil d?lares, la gran mayor?a de nicarag?enses mayores de 60 a?os ya jubilados, reciben del Estado una miserable pensi?n que dif?cilmente supera los cincuenta d?lares al mes, una suma que apenas sirve para la sobrevivencia.

Las angustias de los jubilados no se circunscriben a los malabares que tienen que hacer para ajustar el dinero recibido en calidad de pensi?n a las necesidades de alimentaci?n y gastos perif?ricos, sino que se inician desde que llega el d?a para recibir el cheque enviado por el Gobierno, ya que para hacerlo efectivo deben hacer largas filas en uno de los seis bancos comerciales que existen en Nicaragua, a riesgo de que al salir de la sede bancaria aparezca un delincuente y los deje sin nada.

El salario promedio en Nicaragua alcanza unos 210 d?lares, aunque los 65 mil trabajadores de la educaci?n y la salud, que representan un 70 por ciento de los empleados p?blicos, ganan mensualmente un salario equivalente a 70 d?lares. La pensi?n promedio que reciben maestros y trabajadores de la salud, entre m?dicos y enfermeras, una vez jubilados, es de apenas 67 d?lares.

En Nicaragua, alguien se jubila con 60 a?os de edad y al menos 14 a?os de haber cotizado como m?nimo al Instituto Nicarag?ense de Seguridad Social (Inss). Una regla que desde hace dos a?os se intenta cambiar en perjuicio de los cotizantes nicarag?enses.

Existe una moci?n para pasar a 62 a?os la edad de jubilarse en Nicaragua, y tener cotizado 25 a?os. El asunto es que, de acuerdo con datos del Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (Pnud), la esperanza de vida de los nicarag?enses es una de las m?s bajas de Centroam?rica. Se calcula que para el a?o 2002 la esperanza de vida en Nicaragua era de 68 a?os, mientras que en Costa Rica alcanzaba los 76 a?os.

Al finalizar el a?o 2001, el estatal Instituto Nicarag?ense de Seguridad Social (Inss) ten?a 72.000 pensionados, por viudez, orfandad y vejez.

En Nicaragua, la ley establece como m?ximo el equivalente a 1.500 d?lares la pensi?n mensual que puede recibir un beneficiado por la seguridad social. Este a?o empezar? a funcionar un sistema privado de pensi?n, cuando a junio pr?ximo inicien operaciones dos Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones (AFP), que administrar?n las pensiones de unos 250.000 nicarag?enses menores de 43 a?os de edad, que forman parte de la poblaci?n laboral activa.

En Costa Rica, mientras tanto, se analiza una reforma que pretende reducir la inequidad en el acceso al r?gimen de pensiones, pues apenas cubre a menos de la mitad de la fuerza de trabajo.

Seg?n expone el documento Estado de la Naci?n, adem?s de significar en s? mismo un problema de equidad, junto con el creciente envejecimiento de la poblaci?n y el manejo espec?fico de los fondos de reserva, se torna en una amenaza a la supervivencia de los reg?menes existentes. Es por este motivo que la Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (Ccss) har? este a?o la reforma a su sistema de pensiones de Invalidez, Vejez y Muerte (IVM). Seg?n trascendi?, los cambios contemplar?an la edad de retiro (hoy en 65 a?os), el n?mero de cuotas y el perfil de beneficios. Un estudio de la Ccss, sostiene que para el 2010 ya ser?n incontrolables los problemas entre los ingresos cuotas y los egresos del sistema.

Para el IVM cotizan unos 800.000 trabajadores en todo el pa?s. Ante los cambios en la expectativa de vida de la poblaci?n, actualmente hay 7 trabajadores activos por cada pensionado. Esa relaci?n se reducir? a 3 en el 2040. Si no se toman las medidas pertinentes ahora, tales como aumentar las cotizaciones, se considera que los j?venes de hoy, no podr?n disfrutar de una vejez tranquila.

Tras echar un vistazo a algunos pa?ses de la regi?n, es evidente que los niveles de cobertura de los sistemas de pensiones se han estancado o disminuido, no atendi?ndose el principal problema de Am?rica Latina.

Por tanto, la prestaci?n futura de pensi?n o jubilaci?n no solo es impredecible, sino adem?s insegura, al tiempo que los costos individuales y los fiscales son alt?simos. Los reg?menes privados son adem?s sustancialmente contradictorios con las nuevas formas de informalidad y precariedad, sumadas al creciente desempleo.u

Colaboraron en esta investigaci?n F?lix Carreras (Uruguay), Alexandra Farf?n (Colombia), Ver?nica Goyzueta (Brasil), Vicente P?ez (Paraguay), Daniel Brousek (Per?) y Jos? Antonio Pastor (Costa Rica). Tambi?n se utiliz? material de la agencia EFE.

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Vivir con poco
Andr?s Gonz?lez es un nicarag?ense de 78 a?os de edad que cotiz? durante 25 a?os en las diversas empresas para las que trabaj?, sobre todo de la construcci?n, tanto privadas como del sector p?blico. Lleg? a alcanzar un salario promedio de unos 2.300 c?rdobas (unos 150 d?lares al tipo de cambio actual), pero cuando calific? para recibir la pensi?n, hace ya diez a?os, su sorpresa fue enorme, pues el primero, el segundo y muchos otros cheques que comenz? a recibir apenas llegaban a los 300 c?rdobas (unos veinte d?lares).

Diez a?os despu?s, gracias a presiones, jornadas de protestas y hasta penosas huelgas de hambres de miles de jubilados, Andr?s como muchos otros perjudicados lograron una revalorizaci?n de sus pensiones. Hoy recibe un cheque de 1.100 c?rdobas (unos 75 d?lares). Aun con ese incremento, Gonz?lez debe hacer "malabares" para resolver sus necesidades de cada mes, como pagar los servicios de agua potable, energ?a el?ctrica, alcantarillado, comprar la alimentaci?n de ?l y su esposa, as? como la atenci?n m?dica que requiere debido a su edad.

"La pensi?n que recibo se va en la comida, en el pago de la luz y el agua", exclam? el anciano al relatar parte de su historia. El costo de los servicios b?sicos, principalmente el de la energ?a el?ctrica, en este pa?s son altos, y constantemente los jubilados, que no obtienen ning?n beneficio adicional del Estado, reclaman alteraciones en las facturas de cobro por esos servicios. "Cotic? 40 a?os y desde que estoy jubilado, hace cinco a?os, apenas recibido un cheque por 1.140 c?rdobas que comienzo a gastar desde que tengo que pagar el taxi para ir a retirarlo", dijo por su parte H?ctor Bonilla Zeled?n, de 66 a?os de edad.

Cont? que durante su vida laboral lleg? a ganar un sueldo mensual equivalente a los 5.000 c?rdobas (unos 335 d?lares), pero que al final de ese per?odo, su ingreso salarial disminuy?, lo que incidi? en el valor de su pensi?n.

"Lo que recibo no me da para vivir dignamente el resto de mi vida, tengo que estar atenido a la ayuda que recibo de mis hijos", agreg? este jubilado cuya historia es similar a la de los otros miles de nicarag?enses que despu?s de cotizar por muchos a?os la pensi?n que reciben no les alcanza para nada.

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El retiro en la casa del T?o Sam
Casto Ocando
Especial para Tiempos del Mundo

MIAMI. La llamada etapa dorada del retiro, que permit?a a una gran mayor?a de los jubilados disfrutar de sus ?ltimos a?os de vida con la garant?a de unos suficientes fondos de retiro, est? sufriendo un cambio dram?tico en Estados Unidos, revelaron estudios recientes.

Seg?n una investigaci?n patrocinada por la Asociaci?n Americana de Personas Retiradas (AARP), durante el 2003 cerca del 40 por ciento de las personas entre 50 y 70 a?os dijeron que continuar?n trabajando luego del retiro, esto por razones econ?micas, o bien porque no pueden mantenerse con el dinero que reciben de la seguridad social, o porque no pueden pagarse costosos tratamientos de salud que no son cubiertos por el Medicare. Al mismo tiempo, la oficina del Censo report? en el tercer trimestre del 2003 un incremento del n?mero de abuelos que act?an como responsables primarios de sus nietos, una cifra que se ubic? en 2.4 millones de ancianos en el pa?s, mientras que un total de 4.5 millones son el sost?n de su propio hogar. A pesar de que el sistema de seguridad social concentra el mayor m?sculo financiero del pa?s, los expertos advierten que podr?a entrar en un estado de quiebra para el a?o 2017 si no se toman correctivos ahora, con impredecibles consecuencias para la econom?a de Estados Unidos y por ende, para el sistema econ?mico mundial.

"El sistema de seguridad social es el programa de gasto p?blico m?s grande del mundo, con ingresos anuales de aproximadamente 400.000 millones de d?lares, casi un cuarto del presupuesto fiscal norteamericano y m?s grande que el Producto General Bruto (PGB) nominal de Rusia", sostiene el profesor Jos? Pi?era, ex ministro de Trabajo y Previsi?n Social en Chile y co-presidente del Proyecto para la Privatizaci?n de la Seguridad Social del Cato Institute, en Washington. Seg?n Pi?era, "la falla fatal del sistema es que actualmente el gobierno federal no invierte ning?n porcentaje de los fondos para pago de beneficios futuros.

En su lugar, gasta cada centavo que recibe en los pensionados actuales y en otros programas gubernamentales. A partir del 2017 los desembolsos del sistema empezar?n a exceder los ingresos, y los pol?ticos se ver?n forzados a escoger entre diferentes opciones desagradables: aumentar los impuestos, incrementar la deuda, o reducir los beneficios de los pensionados".

La dram?tica realidad de la jubilaci?n est? tocando a miles de ancianos hispanos, que cada d?a deben salir a la calle a procurarse el sustento en labores tan variadas como dependientes de tiendas, ayudantes en supermercados y vendedores ambulantes en las esquinas m?s concurridas de las ciudades, aunque tambi?n est? afectando a profesionales calificados que luego de largos a?os de trabajo, no cuentan con suficiente dinero para retirarse c?modamente y seguir siendo el principal sustento familiar.

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Lo que un d?a fue
Carlos Alberto Becerril
Tiempos del Mundo

M?XICO. Hasta hace 30 a?os, alcanzar una pensi?n justa y honorable al final de la vida productiva en M?xico era, m?s que una posibilidad, un derecho alcanzado y disfrutado. El Instituto Nacional del Seguro Social, (Imss) organismo asistencial emanado de la Revoluci?n Mexicana, ofrec?a adem?s de la llamada seguridad social, como es el servicio m?dico y acceso a diferentes mecanismos de beneficios sociales, un sistema de pensi?n que permit?a a los trabajadores afiliados al Instituto recibir ?ntegro su sueldo al retirarse.

Si bien los salarios en M?xico jam?s han sido lo suficientemente buenos, hasta mediados de los a?os setenta, en t?rminos generales, permit?an el sostenimiento de una familia en estratos muy cercanos a la clase media, sobre todo en trabajos formales que contaban con todas las prerrogativas legales.

Los ?ltimos treinta a?os han sido desastrosos para los sistemas de pensiones en M?xico, las recurrentes crisis econ?micas han hecho mella en aquellos que despu?s de toda una vida de trabajo, reciben menos que una limosna para sobrevivir. La causa: devaluaciones y un olvido que hace que la tercera edad est? a la expensa de aquellos que a?n mantienen una actividad econ?mica.

Tal es el caso del se?or Juan Reza, bur?crata que inici? sus actividades en la Secretar?a de Salubridad y Asistencia hace ya m?s de 70 a?os. Durante su carrera lleg? a ser jefe de oficina, un puesto menor pero que le permit?a solventar las necesidades de su esposa y de sus tres hijos, y que le permiti? costear una carrera profesional a dos de ellos.

Hace 27 a?os opt? por el retiro, alcanzando una jubilaci?n completa despu?s de 35 a?os de servicios, cuando en aquel entonces su jubilaci?n alcanzaba la suma aproximada de 1.500 d?lares mensuales, suma suficiente para esperar una vejez sin apremios. Sin embargo, apenas se jubil?, se enfrent? a la primera devaluaci?n en el a?o de 1975 y en un s?lo mes vio que su pensi?n se reduc?a a menos de la mitad.

El tiempo pas? y en tanto las enfermedades de la vejez se incrementaban, el salario se desvanec?a.

Los a?os ochenta, con su proceso inflacionario y devaluatorio, establecieron que finalmente la pensi?n se erosionara y su jubilaci?n alcanzara su nivel m?nimo de menos de 70 d?lares al mes, cantidad que se ha mantenido hasta la fecha.

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Venezuela on the edge
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040220-100115-8581r.htm
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is showing signs of desperation as the country's National Election Committee reviews signatures calling for a recall vote. In his attempt to prevent a potential recall, Mr. Chavez is resorting to an old strongman's ploy: Cry treason. It is looking increasingly unlikely, though, that Mr. Chavez will be able to counter the gathering support for rule of law.
Much of Venezuela is watching nervously as the National Election Committee reviews the signatures. Two members of the opposition, Timoteo Zambrano and Mauel Cova (part of a formal negotiating process with the government that cleared the way for the recall petition), traveled to the United States recently and met with editors at The Washington Times. Messrs. Zambrano and Cova charged that the Chavez government had tried to block monitors from the Organization of American States (OAS) from observing part of the review and had tried to invalidate signatures on bogus pretenses.
They also claimed that the OAS held firm against these government moves, maintaining it would not certify the review process if their team wasn't guaranteed observation of the committee's review. A recent statement by the OAS alludes to some of the claims made by the opposition: "During the observation of this process, the OAS and the Carter Center have detected technical and administrative defects ... Problems have been noted during the physical verification of signature collection forms, and during the initial days of the work of the second-level review Technical Committee, which was overwhelmed by the large volume of problem signature forms sent to it." The OAS attributed these "defects" to "the novel nature and complexity of the process." The OAS is being too diplomatic. Clearly, the Chavez government didn't want the world to see them trying to fix the election.
Mr. Chavez has a lot to be nervous about. The OAS has been a tenacious observer. Brazil's left-leaning president, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, who has enormous clout in the region, has called on Mr. Chavez to respect the decisions of the electoral committee. And Amnesty International has called Mr. Chavez to account for railing against the pro-democratic efforts of NGOs and human rights groups.
The Chavez government had accused some NGOs and human rights groups of committing "treason" for having received some funding from U.S. agencies.
The electoral committee has set a Feb. 28 deadline for deciding whether the required 2.4 million Venezuelans petitioned for a recall vote. Feb. 28 will, therefore, be a watershed date for the country. Mr. Chavez would be wise to acknowledge how closely he is being watched and respect the decision of the electoral committee. Regardless of the outcome, that decision must be the final word on the current political standoff.
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>> KUMBAYA ANYONE?

Do Borders Matter To President Bush?
Posted Feb. 20, 2004
By Kelly Patricia O Meara


Some critics insist that the prospect of cheap labor is one of the driving forces behind the president?s immigration-reform policy.


It is no secret that tens of thousands of jobs in the software sector are being shipped to India, nor are many unaware that millions of manufacturing jobs, once filled by America's blue-collar middle class, have been moved to Communist China where desperate people are willing to work for substandard wages. What may not be understood is that 2.5 million Americans have lost their jobs since 2001, and nearly 400,000 ran out of their federal unemployment benefits in January of this year alone. Indeed the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average salary for U.S. workers has fallen from $44,570 to $35,410 since 2001, with nearly 5 million Americans working at part-time employment to make ends meet.

This bleak picture is wholly out of line with the reported "recovery" touted by Alan Greenspan, the top money man at the Federal Reserve. Despite what has been described as a jobless recovery, President George W. Bush last month proposed a more lenient immigration policy in an effort to "create a system that is fairer, more consistent and more compassionate."

The president appears to be responding to upbeat data provided by his top economic advisor, N. Gregory Manikow, who recently announced that outsourcing American jobs overseas is actually good for the nation's economy. Manikow assured, "I know there will be jobs in the future," and in fact has predicted 2.6 million new payroll jobs by the end of 2004. Not everyone agrees with that upbeat assessment of the nation's job market.

And the new immigration reform, say critics on both the left and right, invites mass immigration to the United States to "match willing foreign workers with willing U.S. employers when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs."

According to the fact sheet provided by the White House, "the Federal Government [will] offer temporary-worker status to undocumented men and women now employed in the United States and those in foreign countries who have been offered employment here." While the president's proposal has been short on specifics, the idea is that U.S. employers first must consider Americans for these jobs, the program will prevent exploitation of undocumented workers, and the process will become an incentive for temporary workers to return to their countries of origin when their temporary status expires.

In other words, the estimated 8 million to 12 million undocumented aliens now illegally residing in the United States, and the untold millions of other "willing employees" who may be granted temporary status in the United States, will, after making a living wage, return voluntarily to the countries from which they fled because they could not make ends meet there. Critics of the proposal quote the president's father, who was fond of saying in other contexts, "It doesn't seem prudent."

Certainly not if recent experience is any guide. Although the president asserts that this reform does not include amnesty, the same claim was made for the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The sweeping IRCA legislation was touted under President Ronald Reagan as a bill to end illegal immigration, to help control illegal immigration by implementing employer sanctions, to increase border patrols and to remove the stigma associated with being a fugitive alien. But the linchpin of IRCA was that aliens who could prove that they had been living illegally in the United States continuously since Jan. 1, 1982, were grandfathered into the system and given amnesty and the right to become permanent residents.

Not only did the IRCA legislation fail to "control illegal immigration" but, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the population of illegal aliens increased further when family members of the recently legalized alien group (2.8 million were granted permanent-resident status under IRCA) illegally joined their breadwinners in the United States. The 2000 census indicated that between 500,000 and 700,000 illegal aliens were settling in the United States every year, and the INS estimated in January 2000 that 7 million illegal aliens were living in the United States. Given that this is well above the numbers estimated before the 1986 IRCA legislation, it seems clear to critics that amnesty is no deterrent to illegal immigration.

Worse, say cultural conservatives, are problems cited in a 1997 report from the National Research Council (NRC), part of the private, nonprofit institutions known as the National Academies that provide science-, technology- and health-policy advice under a congressional charter. According to this study, "the educational-attainment levels of post-1965 immigrants have steadily declined. Foreign-born workers, on average, earn less than native-born workers and the earnings gap similarly has widened over the years. Those from Latin America [including Mexico] presently account for over half of the entire foreign-born population of the nation and they earn the lowest wages."

The NRC found no evidence "of discriminatory wages being paid to immigrants; rather, it found that immigrant workers are paid less than native-born workers because, in fact, they are less skilled and less educated. Post-1965 immigrants are disproportionately increasing the segment of the nation's labor supply that has the lowest human-capital endowments. In the process, they are suppressing the wages of all workers in the lowest skill sector of the labor market."

Then there is a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization devoted to researching policy issues of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal and other impacts of immigration in the United States. It says that, based on estimates from the National Academy of Sciences using age and education at arrival, "the lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a negative $55,200." The CIS report further says that, "even after welfare reform, an estimated 34 percent of households headed by legal Mexican immigrants, and 25 percent headed by illegal Mexican immigrants, used at least one major welfare program, in contrast to 15 percent of native households. Mexican immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, almost all of whom are legal residents, still have double the welfare-use rate of natives."

Little wonder that Mexican President Vicente Fox sees legal status for millions of uneducated and undocumented workers who have immigrated illegally to the United States as a "very important step forward" for his country. Critics wonder what Fox means by "important step forward." Does it mean, they ask, that the burden of creating jobs for these lawbreakers has been lifted, or that he's pleased U.S. taxpayers will lighten his load of providing basic services for large numbers of Mexican citizens? Others on both the left and right are asking how President Bush's immigration proposal can be good for American taxpayers when Fox so openly cheers the exportation of his unemployed to the United States.

But apparently U.S. taxpayers are wearying of pocketbook compassion. A recent CNN-USA Today poll found that 55 percent oppose the president's immigration plan, that by a 2-1 margin those polled said immigrants harm the economy by driving down wages, and that 74 percent said "No" when asked if it should be easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens.

White House spokesmen are quick to point out that, in point of fact, President Bush didn't use the word "amnesty." The problem is that his proposal allows for an extension of the temporary-work permit (the length of which apparently will be determined at a later date) and he has said that these "willing workers" will be provided the right to apply for permanent residence. So inquiring minds want to know whether, if this is not an amnesty, how the president intends to get tens of millions of people to return to their countries of origin after their visas expire (whenever that is), since the whole point of his proposal supposedly is to deal with the problem that 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens now in the United States apparently won't leave.

Furthermore, say critics, Americans may wonder what happens if each of these "willing workers" becomes legalized through the temporary-worker program. And even if each pays into state and federal tax systems and the nonexistent Social Security trust fund, the financial shortfalls from the subsidies paid to them could be huge? What incentives do the so-called temporary workers actually have to leave?

Naturally, there are many questions that ought to be considered by lawmakers; but already there are some in Congress who say they've seen this kind of compassionate legislation before and the consequences aren't pretty. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) tells Insight that "I would have respected the president more if he had said, 'Hey, let's just scrap this idea of borders and nation-states. We're all just one big continent and, you know, we'll all just join hands and sing the first verse of 'Kumbaya.'"

According to Tancredo, "If the president's proposal is accepted, then the 8 [million] to 12 million will be able to apply for their families to come to the U.S., and then we're talking about 25 [million] to 30 million people. Once here, they are entitled to medical care, K-12 education, and more housing and roads will have to be built and the infrastructure developed. This is all for people who maybe make minimum wage. The truth is that in a free society with any degree of unemployment, especially 8 [million] to 12 million people minimum, there is no such thing as a job that no American will take. There is only a job no American will take for the amount of money the employer is willing to pay."

Tancredo continues, "If you can restrict the supply of this sort of labor, which we do by controlling the border, we could at least eliminate the downward pressure on wages that now exists as a result of the fact that we've got 8 [million] to 12 million people who are here illegally looking for any job they can get for any amount of money they can get. So when the president says, 'I want to match the willing workers with the willing employers,' I hope he's just kidding because there are billions of people [in this world] who are willing to undercut American workers right now." Opponents are deeply angry. "For the sake of cheap labor," Tancredo says, "the president is willing actually to open the floodgate. I would have been more impressed if the president had said, 'I think the truth of the matter, from where I stand, is the United States is no longer a country defined by borders. We are just a place on a continent, the source of a great deal of consumer activity, creating huge markets for the world, and borders simply impede the flow of people, goods and services and we ought to get rid of them.' They don't have the guts to say it but that is where they want to go. That is the essence of the 'willing-worker/willing-employer' analogy."

What is more, Republican Tancredo and his counterparts among Democrats in the labor unions are deeply suspicious of the motives of those advocating the program. "This proposal and the ensuing legislation aren't going to stop illegal entry, and I don't think the administration thinks so either," Tancredo says. "A great deal of pressure has been put on the president to do something in response to requests from Mexico and other countries. Since you can't get the whole enchilada, they go for this measure that will give amnesty to the millions and millions who already are here, and then they say they'll tighten up the borders. That's been said before. Well, we're never going to tighten up the borders and we're never going to enforce our immigration laws because the administration and the Congress do not believe in border enforcement or border security, and they certainly do not believe in internal enforcement of immigration law. It's pretty much a case of 'Gosh, they're here. What the heck? Let's face reality - the law isn't working.' That's nonsense. There's nothing wrong with the immigration laws. What isn't working is the desire to enforce the laws."

Dan Stein, director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national, nonprofit, public-interest organization that supports immigration reform, tells Insight that "the president's proposal is unrealistic, lacks basic credibility and is insulting to the intelligence of anyone who has studied this problem for any length of time."

According to Stein, "This proposal feeds into the basic instincts of Democrats, who say, 'Our policy is come on in and, if you get here, we'll fight to let you stay.' The proposal seems like a surrender to a reality of our own making, which is that by letting aliens disregard the law we're being forced to accommodate their unwillingness to play by the rules, and that leaves us to absorb all costs and impacts. But it is a utopian mind that neglects the reality that we only need to create jobs which have enough value added to contribute to the system more than we pay out to support people. We're being told that the borders don't matter except in the context of the claims that these aliens can make on U.S. taxpayers. You couldn't have a completely free hemispheric labor market unless all countries were at economic parity and had parity in their social-benefit systems. Are we going to try to reach equilibrium with Brazil or El Salvador in terms of labor-market conditions? Ultimately, it means we're no longer a nation. The sovereignty of our borders is going to be subordinated to some trade organization that monitors the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement. This creates a job fair for the whole world."

"What I'm hoping," explains Stein, "is that the thing that saves us is Mexican irredentism - that their own self-respect and desire for autonomy and good old-fashioned nationalism will prevent them from signing any agreement that is really reciprocal. What they want is to have Mexican citizens working here and sending money home - dual nationality. What they don't want is for U.S. citizens to be going down to Mexico and treating it like it is an extension of the U.S. But there doesn't seem to be any need to worry because there is no reciprocity south of the border, no mutuality of obligation in this proposal. We're not getting anything from Mexico in exchange for the president's proposal. The only countries that you can walk into like the U.S. are countries that by definition don't have the kind of benefits we have. For a capitalist system to survive and enjoy the support of its workers there has to be a basic belief in a fair shake somewhere along the line - some fundamental belief that the system is there for their benefit. We are destroying the idea of a stable middle class as an element of our society. What we've got now is this elite consensus that we're ready to go back to 1905 labor conditions so that we become two societies. One society that will do 'American's work,' which involves sitting in an office, and then there's the 'other people's work' - miserable work at low pay. There will be an increasing distance between the two as if we occupy two different worlds - like going back to the antebellum South."

Glen Spencer, who heads the American Border Patrol, is a retired economist and longtime activist against illegal immigration. He tells Insight he isn't surprised by the president's proposal. "I'm stunned," says Spencer, "but not surprised. I caught a glimpse of where the president was going when three years ago he was quoted as saying that he wanted to make migration safe and orderly. Well, at the time, legal immigration already was safe and orderly, so the only thing he could have meant was illegal immigration. This is a disaster."

Spencer continues: "Bill King, the former chief U.S. Border Patrol agent and the person who ran the 1986 amnesty program, tells me that the president's proposal is going to be a general amnesty, and with family unification it will cover half of Mexico. In other words, what the president is proposing is that we have a kind of one-way merger with Mexico. That is, Mexicans can become U.S. citizens, but U.S. citizens cannot become Mexicans. So they'll have dual citizenship and the right to own property in Mexico, but Americans cannot. The U.S. gets nothing out of the proposal. We can't work in Mexico like they can here, they certainly don't have the benefits we have here, and if you do get a work permit it is very limited. There should be no discussion about worker programs and new immigration policies until the president can ensure that the borders will be controlled. Without control of the borders this new proposal means nothing, and the president has reason to know it."

Guillermo Meneses is a spokesman for the AFL-CIO, which represents 13 million union members worldwide. He tells Insight that his organization "opposes the president's guest-worker program. We are for the legalization of undocumented workers who have been here for a number of years and through their hard work and dedication have paid taxes and have family members who are U.S. citizens. The issue is that the guest-worker programs give the employers the upper hand. If I'm an employer and I know you're working for me, and if you stop working for me you have to go back to your country of origin, this opens itself up to abuses."

In other words, the AFL-CIO supports an outright amnesty bill for the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens currently residing in the United States, a potentially organizable labor force. This also is the position of U.S.-based Mexican political groups. For instance, the National Council of La Raza, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization that says it was established to reduce poverty and discrimination and to improve life opportunities for Hispanic Americans, says it believes "a new guest-worker program is not a real solution to our immigration problems and that it would actually be harmful to immigrants." Furthermore, La Raza believes that illegal "immigrants should have a choice to return home or to stay permanently in the U.S."

If Democrats in Congress have their way and continue to oppose every well-publicized administration proposal in this election year, the president's immigration proposal likely will find its way to oblivion. Certainly there are many Republicans who are not at all pleased with the Bush scheme and tell Insight they mean to oppose it come hell or high water. The trouble with depending upon a coalition of Democratic partisanship and Republican conservatism, say critics of the scheme, is that the usual internationalists already are poisoning the well. According to Tancredo, "What worries me is that Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle [D-S.D.] and Nebraska [Republican] Sen. Chuck Hagel already have introduced their own amnesty bill and it is 10 times worse than what the president proposed. I think the Democrats' bill basically says, 'Oly, oly, oxen free!'"

Kelly Patricia O'Meara is an investigative reporter for Insight.
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>> KUMBAYA 2...

Investigative Report
Cracks in System Open to Terrorists
Posted Feb. 17, 2004
By Timothy W. Maier


Some analysts say the real problem with the airline security system is that it?s too predictable and therefore easy for terrorists to penetrate.

Imagine if the world's most notorious fugitive, Osama bin Laden, attempted to board an airliner in the United States. Suppose he were clean-shaven, sporting short hair, wearing a pin-striped business suit and looked like so many other travelers that no suspicions were raised. How far might he get? If he used aliases such as names of family members he would be nabbed instantly and whisked away for questioning. That's because many of his relatives are on the FBI's secret "no-fly list," according to intelligence sources.

But suppose he boldly decided to use his own name. Would he be cleared to fly? Insight recently learned that scenario was tested at a U.S. airport in the South during January. The result was troubling: America's most-wanted fugitive is cleared to fly. According to airline-security documents obtained by this magazine, the name Osama bin Laden was punched into the computer by an airline official and, remarkably, that name was cleared at the security checkpoint all passengers must pass through before being issued a boarding pass.

The realization that Osama bin Laden made the cut sent shivers down the spines of airline-security officials who discovered the system gap. "When the most-wanted man in modern history is not included on the list of possible terrorists there are some serious deficiencies in the system which need to be addressed," says an airport-security official familiar with the test. In fact, Insight has learned from law-enforcement sources that at least two other names of known terrorists cleared security checkpoints when officials punched them into the computer.

As shocking as these revelations may seem, airline-security experts and privacy-advocate groups say they are not surprised. Kathleen Sweet, author of Aviation and Airport Security: Terrorism and Safety Concerns, tells Insight the incident confirms the vulnerability of the current system. "It often fails to detect terrorists until they have boarded the plane," and by then it might be too late, Sweet warns. As she points out, "We have computers talking to each other but not necessarily in a timely manner."

When Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spokesman Mark Hatfield was asked why bin Laden's name did not set off alarms, he grew silent. Obviously uncomfortable, he at last said the airlines that employ Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening (CAPS), a software program designed to flag suspicious travelers, don't use it, well, consistently. "It is almost 10 years since CAPS began, and there is just not a great deal of consistency between the airlines," he says. "It is possible for some airlines to flag some passengers while other airlines may end up clearing them to fly." The real-time data aren't even sent to the ticket agent, which means a name recently flagged may not show up in the airline system until it's too late. Pressed to comment specifically on bin Laden's name being cleared to fly, Hatfield refused to attempt an explanation unless told how and by whom the terrorist's name was entered.

Hatfield simply acknowledges there are systematic flaws in the system and says that's why TSA proposed in January to build an upgraded version called Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II). The proposed system would transmit real-time data with no delays and be run by TSA rather than the airlines.

The first CAPS program was the brainchild of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, better known as the "Gore Commission," because the former vice president chaired the panel. Its report directed the federal government to "consider aviation security as a national-security issue" and President Bill Clinton dumped $100 million into such efforts, helping to launch the first CAPS program in 1998, three years before 9/11.

Details of the software were kept under close wraps by the federal government, which feared the slightest release of information could help terrorists defeat the system. But in the last five years information about CAPS slowly has emerged through disclosures in congressional hearings, investigative reports and release of hundreds of pages of related documents during civil suits filed by angry passengers who claimed they unjustly were targeted. An even more revealing look at the Gore system was presented in a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). According to the study, CAPS profiles and provides risk-assessment analysis by matching a would-be traveler's itinerary with data from historical records pertaining to known terrorist activities. Information under scrutiny might include a person's address, how and when they paid for the ticket, how many times they have traveled abroad, names of traveling companions, destination, rental-car transaction and whether the passenger bought a one-way or round-trip ticket.

Once the profile is created it remains in the CAPS software, which is accessible from every airline check-in counter in the nation. As soon as a passenger checks in, the ticket agent immediately enters the traveler's name into the CAPS console. The passenger's travel itinerary then is linked to government databases that scour the information to see if it matches the terrorist profile. Thereupon a "threat index" is assigned to identify the potential risk the passenger poses to the flight.

The CAPS system separates suspicious passengers into two groups: Passengers who "fit the profile" become "selectees" and are subjected to heightened security measures, while those deemed too high a security risk are denied a boarding pass. The FBI keeps the "selectees" list secret, but passengers easily can find out if they have triggered an alert because the ticket agent will stamp their boarding passes with a huge "S" that tips airport screeners to do a more extensive search.

On the surface more scrutiny may seem to ensure more security, but the MIT study concluded that CAPPS II actually will weaken airline security by making the screening process overly predictable. MIT warned that the system easily can be penetrated by terrorists who send test subjects into the airport to identify what will get a passenger flagged - something intelligence experts believe the 9/11 terrorists did months in advance.

Daniel Biran, assistant managing director at Citigate Global Intelligence & Security (CGIS), an international business-intelligence and security firm, says the central problem with U.S. airline security is that it is predictable. "Unpredictability creates real problems for terrorists," he says. For CAPPS II to be effective, he emphasizes that it must go "beyond data mining and look at human behavior." Biran notes that simply relying on watch lists would not have caught the 9/11 terrorists because "none interacted with the watch list."

Who goes onto these secret lists is of great interest to terrorists but also has been a sore point among passengers who claim the Bush administration may be targeting those critical of administration policies and intelligence operations. While both the TSA and FBI insist they don't target groups based on political orientation but focus on suspicious traveling patterns and names of suspected terrorists, this does not explain why some repeatedly have had problems boarding planes. Consider just a few examples:


Barbara Olshansky, assistant director for the liberal Center for Constitutional Rights, was ordered to drop her pants in front of other travelers for a strip search in 2002. She consistently has had problems getting cleared to fly, and the group is in the midst of litigation about this.


Doug Stuber, who ran Ralph Nadar's presidential Green Party campaign in North Carolina in 2000, was flagged and questioned by the U.S. Secret Service about his politics prior to attempting to board a flight to Germany for business in 2002. During the discussion Stuber screamed out, "George Bush is as dumb as a rock," which prompted officers to bring in the Secret Service for further interrogation. Stuber was barred from taking any flight that day and missed his business trip.


Two American antiwar protesters, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, who copublish the San Francisco-based War Times, were stopped at ATA airlines in 2002 after the computer spat out their names as being on the FBI's no-fly list. Airline officials later claimed this was a "mistake" and that the names should not have been so listed. Gordon and Adams eventually were cleared to fly after they were questioned and the ticket agent placed a large "S" on their ticket stubs for additional scrutiny during the baggage-check phase.


Virgine Lawinger, a nun in Milwaukee who is an activist with Peace Action, was stopped with about 20 of her students in 2002 from boarding a plane to Washington, where they had hoped to lobby against U.S. military aid to the Colombian government.

But it's not always those on the left who are being scrutinized. An Insight re-porter ran into difficulty recently at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where he was taken aside and questioned by law-enforcement officials. The writer, who has been highly critical of intelligence failures in both the Bush and Clinton administrations, thought he might be on the list in order to show that TSA is not profiling by ethnicity. He missed his flight but was put on another. His ticket stub was stamped with a prominent "S," an indication that he is on the selectee list.

The Insight man wants to know how he and other loyal Americans can get off the no-fly list. But TSA won't say because currently there is no procedure for this. Under CAPPS II there is to be an om-budsman system through which passengers can appeal inappropriate scrutiny. For the moment, says a security official, "You do have a better chance of getting off the no-fly list than the selectee list," but how even this may be done remains a mystery.

The barring from flights of U.S. citizens has prompted lawsuits, of course, led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, which claims about 200 Arab men have been detained illegally, with at least five being pulled off planes, because of their ethnicity. The ACLU also has filed a series of lawsuits against the Justice Department to determine what criteria are being used by the FBI to put someone on the no-fly list. So far it has received about 100 pages of nonresponsive "answers" and redacted information concerning the list.

Documents released in the lawsuits consist of e-mails, letters and correspondence to congressmen from U.S. citizens trying to remove themselves from the list and complaining of an invasive system that has resulted in missed flights and uncomfortable searches. The complaints filed include those of a 71-year-old English teacher, a municipal worker who encountered a National Guardsman aiming an M-16 rifle at him when he refused to stand on one leg because he was recovering from a leg injury and a woman who shares the same name as an Australian man 20 years her junior who is suspected of being a terrorist. The government records indicate TSA has been receiving about 11,000 complaints a year, though how many of those come from good citizens who needlessly have been detained or arrested remains unknown because, according to TSA, "there is no pressing need" to collect such information. Airline-security analyst Sweet says she would like to see the lists made public with names, details and photographs, as with FBI most-wanted lists. But TSA says that would tip off the terrorists.

TSA officials insist the new screening system, CAPPS II, will eliminate most of the bumbling and mistakes because it will be more accurate while fulfilling the agency's mission "to ensure freedom of movement." But the new proposed system has set off a firestorm of criticism among privacy groups which charge that TSA appears more interested in regulating people's movements than guarding the U.S. border and maintaining homeland security. Prompted by public concern, the General Accounting Office released a preliminary report showing the system had failed again and again.

In the meantime, privacy advocates fear TSA will be building a more extensive dossier on travelers by collecting and sharing personal data with law-enforcement and intelligence agencies that could result in more names on more lists and more headaches for passengers. When TSA announced in the Federal Register in January that its CAPPS II program would involve building an Aviation Security Screening Records (ASSR) database, it attracted about 14,000 public comments in less than a month, which Hatfield says "have been not always cheers and applause."

The database would link together information from the airlines on their passengers, to include such personal data as credit reports, credit-card purchases, FBI files, arrest reports, job history, telephone logs and motor-vehicle records. In the past much of this information could not be collected by the government without a search warrant and probable cause. Access to some of this data would require changes in privacy laws. While some critics believe CAPPS II is dead in the water, and at least two airlines reportedly have backed out of field tests because of a public backlash, Hatfield insists a preliminary test of the system will begin this summer and full implementation may come before the end of the year.

Once these data are collected, CAPPS II would use a formula to assess the potential security risk presented by each passenger. Some reports suggested that each would be assigned a color, such as green for "okay," yellow for "more screening" or red for "no fly," but Hatfield insists there is no color system. Instead, he says, passengers will be separated into three categories - primary screening, which all passengers must undergo; selectee screening for further evaluation; and the no-fly list. He assures Insight that no personal data would be leaked into the wrong hands.

It's simply a matter of trusting the federal government, you see, something that does not sit well with those concerned about an increase in identity theft and privacy abuse. Lisa Dean, director of the Center for Technology Policy at the Free Congress Foundation, warns that TSA promises the personal data will not be misused and will be given out only to those with a "need to know," but she says it fails to tell the public that TSA reserves the right to give out this information to anyone it deems appropriate. "We have lost control," she says. "The information collected on us puts our identity up for grabs."

In fact, concern has grown as a result of recent reports indicating that JetBlue and Northwest airlines may have provided federal contractors with personal data on millions of passengers without their consent during a test trial of a security-software system. Hatfield maintains the system being tested was not CAPPS II but involved other agencies and other projects. He insists TSA is listening carefully to public concern and it already has made sweeping changes such as reporting only warrant information involving violent crimes to law-enforcement authorities instead of providing all outstanding-warrant in-formation.

Air Transport Association (ATA) spokesman Doug Wills says his group, which represents about 20 major airlines, supports implementation of CAPPS II because "the old system is not sufficient to do what we need to do." However, he says, ATA remains concerned about possible privacy abuse. "We want to know who gets access to the data and, if the federal government discloses the information, we want to know how it is being used and for what purpose," he says. "What does your Visa card or credit rating have to do with identity verification? We don't think that's necessary."

Similarly, Airline Pilot Association (APA) spokesman John Mazor says his association supports CAPPS II but favors eliminating the credit-report data and providing security cards to pilots and transportation workers who have undergone extensive FBI background checks. The pilots are frustrated about their own screening, he says. Robert Cox, a senior airline captain with a major U.S. airline and a former special-projects officer for the national-security committee of the APA, filed this comment about CAPPS II last month to the Federal Register:

"I served in the Army as a paratrooper and with Special Forces, and I am one hell of a patriotic SOB. I take extreme issue with anyone who insinuates otherwise, and unfortunately it happens to me three to four times a day. Several of my comrades have been arrested because they too take extreme issue with the insinuation that they are, or have criminal intent (by virtue of searching for explosives in my shoes, or removing my nail clippers after a thorough search of my bag), and yet are turned loose to fly 250 passengers from the cockpit of a commercial airliner not 25 yards from the screening point. And while I can't say this at the screening point, I can here: I have a crash ax in the cockpit that is FAR more dangerous than my nail clippers. Another interesting item: I have the control wheel. Is anyone else missing the logic here?"

Enough is enough, and when political correctness gets into the equation tempers flare. Former congressman John Cooksey (R-La.) said recently on a radio show, "Someone who comes in with a diaper on his head, and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper, needs to be pulled over." While critics were quick to suggest that a diaper should be put in Cooksey's mouth until he learns to be politically correct, Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy and author of Narco-Terrorism, Evil Money, and the forthcoming Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It, says she is tired of political correctness getting ahead of good sense. She says Israeli airlines don't walk the PC line, but they have the best airline security in the world. Ehrenfeld warns that the 1997 decision of the Clinton Justice Department never to use race, religion, national origin or ethnicity as a screening factor is a grave mistake.

According to Ehrenfeld, security agents should pay special attention to passengers born in countries including Syria, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines - all countries that had and/or continue to have terrorists in training. "We should even ask them their religion," she says, although discrimination laws would need to be changed to allow that. "I don't care about political correctness. I don't want to blow up in midair."

The screening of airline personnel, from baggage checkers to those preparing food, also falls short of what is needed, Ehrenfeld says. For example, she notes 35 percent of the 1.5 billion pieces of airline baggage trigger a false alarm, but the follow-up on these electronic warnings rests strictly with the screener. If 30,000 of the 55,000 screeners hired recently have not even been given a background check, and with at least 50 security agents at New York's JFK International Airport now known to have passed background checks that did not reveal their criminal record, Ehrenfeld wonders, how reliable is the service we are getting from TSA?

Meanwhile, a traveler selected by CAPS for special screening recently was forced to drink a mysterious liquid found on his possession after failing to persuade authorities he was conducting a science experiment with pond water. The way airline-security officials reacted, you'd think they had busted Osama bin Laden instead of a 7-year-old boy. But of course the real Osama is cleared to fly.

Timothy W. Maier is a writer for Insight.
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'Dark Energy' Backs Idea Einstein Junked

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 21, 2004; Page A02


Astronomers announced yesterday they had found strong new evidence that a theory Albert Einstein proposed but later discarded may have been right after all, providing crucial new clues to the fundamental nature and eventual fate of the cosmos.



A detailed analysis of light from ancient exploding stars has yielded powerful support for the idea that recently discovered "dark energy" that pervades the universe might be what Einstein originally dubbed the "cosmological constant." If confirmed, the findings support theories that the cosmos will continue its slow expansion toward nothingness instead of violently ripping apart or collapsing, astronomers said.

The results were hailed as pivotal new data that will help answer the most pressing and profound questions about the universe, such as what makes up most of the void and what eventually will happen to it.

"I think it's incredible," said John Bahcall of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. "What it is that currently drives the expansion of the universe -- that's the burning question today."

Martin J. Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge in England, said: "It's an important step toward getting a consistent picture of how our universe is expanding. It's corroborating the rather surprising picture that this dark energy pervades all of empty space."

Astronomers startled the scientific world in 1998 when they announced that they had discovered that most of the universe consists of a previously unknown force they dubbed "dark energy," which was causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. The existence of the energy was later confirmed, but its nature remained a mystery, prompting a flurry of research to discern its identity and develop theories to explain it.

"Dark energy and the nature of dark energy is probably the biggest problem that physics is facing today," said Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who helped conduct the new research. "Imagine that we know that a large fraction of the surface of the Earth is covered with water. Imagine if we didn't know what it was that is covering the surface of the Earth. That's the situation that we are in."

The two main theories are that dark energy is the same as or similar to the "cosmological constant" that Einstein proposed -- but later discarded as his "greatest blunder" -- in 1917 to balance the universe against the force of gravity. The leading alternative theory was that it is akin to a weaker version of the rapid expansion that occurred right after the Big Bang, a force field dubbed "quintessence."

One of the key implications of understanding more about dark energy is that it would shed light on what will eventually become of the universe.

"The universe could continue the expansion as it is occurring now. The distances between galaxies will increase, but the galaxies will remain intact," Livio said. "But if the expansion began to get very accelerated, we could get what we call a Big Rip. Galaxies will get torn apart. Stars will get torn apart, and even we will get torn apart. The alternative is the universe could collapse on itself and end up on a Big Crunch."

In the new work, led by Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute, researchers used the orbiting Hubble telescope to measure various properties of light emitted by 16 exploding stars, known as supernovas. Because the stars are at various distances from Earth, they yield information about what was happening at different points in the past. The supernovas included six of the seven most distant supernovas ever studied, dating two-thirds of the way back to the Big Bang.

"This is sort of like a time machine," Riess said in a telephone interview. "By finding them at different distances, we can look at different times in the universe and we can ask how fast the universe was expanding then. It's like looking at tree rings to get a glimpse back in history."

In a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, the researchers concluded that the strength of dark energy was consistent with Einstein's predicted cosmological constant, and that it appeared fairly consistent over time, also as Einstein had theorized. The researchers said they were now twice as confident as they were before that dark energy is consistent with Einstein's idea.

"It looks like Einstein may turn out to have been right, after all," Riess said.

Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the University of Chicago, called the findings profound because they will help guide theorists trying to explain the fundamental structure and evolution of the universe. "It's really a confidence-booster for the simplest possible explanation," Carroll said.

Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University said the findings help narrow the possible theoretical explanations for dark energy, but until more is known about the mysterious force, it remains impossible to predict the fate of the universe with certainty.

"Until we know what dark energy is, no measurement can determine the future absolutely," he said.

Riess and Livio agreed but said that based on what is currently known, the data support the idea that the cosmos will continue expanding very slowly outward for at least the next 30 billion years.

"Our measurement of dark energy indicates that the universe appears to be filled with a semi-permanent dark energy and is not changing enough to cause a cosmic doomsday," Riess told reporters during a briefing.

Cambridge's Rees agreed.

"The simplest assumption is that the universe will become ever darker, and ever emptier, as the galaxies recede from us," Rees said. "And in the very far future, there will be nothing in evidence. Everything will have disappeared beyond the horizon."

? 2004 The Washington Post Company

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
From the March 1, 2004 issue: For once, Israelis agree about something.
by Peter Berkowitz
03/01/2004, Volume 009, Issue 24
Jerusalem
IN ISRAELI POLITICS, contentiousness is the norm and consensus is rare. This makes all the more striking the broad and deep consensus that has formed among Israelis around the conviction that the country, without delay, must complete the construction of the security fence separating it from the West Bank and the Palestinians who live there.
The cause of the consensus is terror. In the old days, before September 2000, it was a mark of the country's national security challenge that almost every adult Israeli had served in the military, and every Israeli had friends and loved ones in the army. These days, the distinguishing mark of the country's national security challenge is something grimmer: Almost every Israeli knows somebody who has been wounded, maimed, or blown to bits by a suicide bomber. For Israelis, the front line is now at home, and it is this transformation of their struggle with the Palestinians that has produced an overwhelming majority--perhaps two thirds of the citizenry--in favor of the security fence.
Predictably, the international community is up in arms. Last December, the United Nations General Assembly voted to refer the question of the legality of Israel's security fence to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion. Working on a greatly expedited schedule, the court set a deadline of January 30 for briefs, with oral arguments to begin on February 23. The Palestinians charge that the fence violates international law, infringes their human rights, and imposes on them grave social and economic hardship. The United States, along with many other nations, opposes the referral of the question to the court on the grounds that the court is, at this time, an inappropriate forum for the question. While the European Union is among the group that opposes involving the court, its representatives have made clear that the E.U. agrees with the Palestinians on many of their charges.
In fact, the case for Israel's security fence is clear and compelling and accounts for the dramatic convergence of Israeli opinion in support of it.
Yet as late as three years ago, almost nobody in Israel was thinking about a fence, in part because it contravenes both left-wing and right-wing views. Those who have embraced the fence from the left have been forced to relinquish their dream of Israelis and Palestinians integrating their economies, traveling daily across open borders, and living together in harmony. And those who have come to it from the right have had to abandon the ambition to maintain Israeli control over, and settlement in, all or most of the disputed territories without partition.
The catalyst for both camps has been the staggering scale of Palestinian terrorism since late September 2000. In the war launched by the Palestinians following Yasser Arafat's rejection of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer of a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, almost all of the West Bank, and a good portion of the Old City in Jerusalem, more than 900 Israelis have been killed and more than 6,000 have been wounded. In a country of about 6.4 million, that is the equivalent of almost 40,000 dead and a quarter of a million wounded in the United States.
RETIRED MAJOR GENERAL Uzi Dayan, former head of Israel's National Security Council, the fence's original architect in 2001, and its foremost defender today, calls the fence "a precondition to everything." By making Israel more secure, he argues, the fence--one third of which has been built and all of which is due to be completed by the end of 2005--will advance the peace process and thereby serve the interests of Palestinians as well as Israelis. But his first priority, he emphasizes, is Israel's security, which he smoothly translates into the language of human rights. "The basic human right is to live. So before talking about human rights and disturbing the daily routine of Palestinians, which is an issue we need to remember, we need to fight terrorism effectively."
Looking over a winding stretch of the security fence not far from his home in the village of Cochav Yair, where the coastal plain turns into rolling hills and where Israel is at its narrowest, with less than 10 miles from the sea to the Green Line, the pre-1967 border based on the 1949 armistice line, Dayan tells me that "the fence is the ultimate obstacle. The only way to fight terrorism effectively is to build a fence, because you can't fight terrorism just offensively. You need a defense. And the best defense is a fence."
What makes Dayan so confident that the fence will be effective? "We built it everywhere in every place when we wanted to prevent infiltration: all along the Jordan River; in the Golan Heights; on the border from Lebanon we built it in eight months from the Mediterranean Sea to Mount Hermon. And the ultimate example is Gaza. In the last three and a half years, not even one terrorist managed to infiltrate from Gaza and to commit a suicide bombing or a terrorist attack. And there were dozens of attempts. Very few even managed to cross the fence." In addition, Dayan points out, terrorist attacks have been dramatically reduced in those areas of the West Bank where the fence has been completed.
Although critics casually refer to it as a wall, in fact more than 95 percent of the barrier that Israel is building around the West Bank is made out of chain-link fence. Not ordinary chain-link fence, to be sure. It is electrified so that when an intruder touches it, Israeli forces are alerted. In addition, on the Palestinian or east side of the fence, the Israelis have dug an anti-vehicle trench. To the immediate west, they have placed a sandy path, which soldiers patrol looking for signs of footprints. Beyond that is a paved two-lane road for military use, and beyond the road is another fence, in some places chain link and in others barbed wire. Further back, cameras mounted on towers monitor the entire system, which is about 50 meters in width. Where there is danger of sniper fire from a Palestinian city that borders an Israeli highway, or where the space is lacking, the Israelis construct instead a concrete wall.
For Dayan, there is no question about the urgency of completing the fence. The problem, he concedes, is the route. The only serious question that divides the newly consolidated Israeli majority is how far the fence should extend into the West Bank in order to bring within its protection Israelis in the settlements.
Dayan--like much of the Israeli military establishment, a man of the left--favors a fence that sticks close to the Green Line. Although he does not regard the Green Line, which runs through villages and corresponds to no natural boundary, as sacrosanct, a security fence that roughly corresponds to it will be considerably shorter, require less time and cost to build, intrude less on Palestinian life, be easier to defend, and generate less international opprobrium than the route advocated by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. While security was uppermost in his mind when he was designing the fence in 2001, Dayan sought to include as few Palestinians as possible on Israel's side, and to minimize hardships. He is pleased that in recent days the Sharon government has scaled back its plan for including Palestinian villages near Israel.
But Dayan stresses that all this is secondary for him: "I never buy the excuse of not building a fence because of conflict about the route of the fence. Which means I'm saying to my government: 'I'm sick and tired. I don't want to hear from you there is a problem, there is debate in the government. [Minister of Justice Yosef] Lapid thinks one way. [Minister of Defense Shaul] Mofaz says another approach. I say just build it. Decide about it. Talk to the Americans. Talk to the Palestinians. Talk among yourselves, for God's sake. But decide upon the route and build it.'"
There is harshness in Dayan's words. But there is also hope. By stopping terrorist attacks, he explains, the fence may strengthen the hand of Palestinian moderates who on their own are powerless to bring Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade under control.
MEANWHILE, the U.N. General Assembly, in the eyes of many thoughtful Israelis, has played into the hands of the extremists. When it placed the matter before the International Court of Justice, the General Assembly took the issue away from the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators charged with it under several U.N. Security Council Resolutions and agreements among the parties, including the U.S.-backed "road map." According to Daniel Taub, director of the General Legal Division at Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "there have been repeated attempts by Palestinians and the Arab group to refer issues in the conflict between us to international forums and specifically the International Court of Justice as part of a general campaign to internationalize the issues." In Taub's view, no good can come of this. In the first place, he argues, the court does not have jurisdiction: No dispute between states is supposed to come before the court without the consent of both parties. Moreover, the referral of the question of the legality of the fence shows bad faith, because the General Assembly had already passed a resolution condemning the fence as illegal.
Sitting across from Taub in his cramped office in Jerusalem, I ask him about a report of the U.N. secretary general summarizing the legal positions of the "Government of Israel" and the "Palestine Liberation Organization." Taub bristles. He tells me that the report badly misstates the Israeli legal position. Then, indignant, he reads me a passage indicating that there should be no tradeoffs between Israeli security and Palestinian freedom, that Israel must desist from any undertakings that infringe Palestinian rights or cause them hardships, even undertakings that Israel has concluded are necessary to defend itself from Palestinian acts of war.
More serious perhaps is the failure of the dossier put together by the United Nations to serve as the basis for the court's work to so much as mention Palestinian terror. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement that summarizes the legal position Israel adopted in its 130-page brief to the court (still confidential under court rules) minces no words:
Neither the question referred to the Court, nor the 20-paragraph General Assembly resolution referring it, makes any reference--not a single word--to the ongoing terrorism directed daily against Israel and its citizens. Similarly the extensive dossier of 88 documents on the question provided to the Court by the United Nations is, staggeringly, totally silent on the subject of Palestinian terrorist attacks. It is devoid of any of the United Nations resolutions condemning terrorism, as well as Israel's letters to the Secretary General detailing the terror attacks it has faced.
And this silence, Israel contends, is a fatal flaw:
It is inconceivable that the International Court of Justice should be requested to give an Advisory Opinion on the issue of Israel's security fence at the behest of the very terrorist organization which has been actively behind many of the murderous attacks which have made the fence necessary. It is even more inconceivable that the request should make no reference at all to the brutal reality of terrorism faced by Israel.
To the charge that Israel's fence is an effort to grab land by creating facts on the ground, Taub responds that a fence that was built right on top of the Green Line would be impractical, cutting through villages, running through valleys, and generally bearing no relation to security, topography, or the needs of daily life. Moreover, Taub emphasizes, the fence brings about no legal change in the status of the territories or the status of the residents, either Palestinians or Israelis who live in settlements. It is temporary, it can be moved and altogether dismantled. And it is not a border. It does not alter Israel's responsibility to protect settlements. And it does not alter ownership of the land on which it is built, which, when privately owned, becomes subject to a temporary requisition order. Israel pays compensation to the owners for use of the land and loss of profits. And Israel makes procedures available to Palestinians who wish to lodge protests against the fence's route. To date, 20 petitions have been submitted to Israel's High Court of Justice.
Further, argues Taub, it is not Israel that is trying to establish a political border but the Palestinians, who insist that, if there is to be a fence, it be built on the Green Line. The Green Line, Taub points out, was never intended to be a final legal border. U.N. resolutions, formal agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, and the road map are, he asserts, "absolutely clear" that the final determination of the border is a subject to be negotiated between the two sides. But won't the fence, whatever Israel's formal position, come to be thought of as a border by both sides to the conflict? Won't it, whatever Israel's intention, create facts on the ground? Taub is not moved. "You can't not fight terrorism--which is a precondition for entering into negotiations--and expect to receive your maximum demands from negotiations."
To the charge that the fence causes disproportional harm to the Palestinians, Taub insists that Israel recognizes genuine hardships and is taking great pains to minimize them. Planning for the route of the fence begins with the army, but before the government approves plans they must undergo an arduous process of adjustment, which involves several layers of consultation--with environmental experts, legal experts, and the local population. Alternative routes are explored, additional gates are considered, increased bus service is examined. The fence has already been moved twice in order to put Palestinian villages on the Palestinian side. And in Abu Dis, an Arab neighborhood most of which lies just beyond the Green Line, Israel is building a new kidney dialysis center for Palestinians cut off by the security fence from the old one.
Like Uzi Dayan, Taub insists that in the long run Palestinians too will benefit from the fence, for with the reduction in terrorism, Israel will need to take fewer intrusive measures in the West Bank. And to the extent that you take terrorism out of the equation, you weaken the militants and strengthen the moderates.
SHLOMO AVINERI, a distinguished political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, won't go as far as Dayan or Taub. He is a self-styled dove who was "rattled" by Camp David 2000. He considers Arafat's decision to go to war rather than accept Barak's offer a watershed moment in Israel's history, and he adamantly supports the fence. Typical of the left-leaning segment of the Israeli consensus, he wants it built as close as possible to the Green Line. But he dismisses the idea of Palestinian moderates. "What is important," says Avineri, "is that there hasn't been a clear statement on the part of any Palestinian leader that suicide bombers are murderers. Not one."
There are, Avineri observes, Palestinian leaders who will say they would recognize Israel if it were to abide by U.N. resolutions and international law. But, he stresses, no other state is spoken of in that way. We say Bosnia or China is in breach of international law, but we do not treat its compliance with international law as a precondition for recognition of its sovereignty. Given current attitudes, and an educational system that continues to instruct children with maps of the Middle East on which Israel does not appear, Israel may have to wait a generation or more, Avineri believes, to find negotiating partners on the Palestinian side.
Khaled Abu Toameh, a prominent Arab-Israeli journalist, takes a still harsher view of the Palestinian side. To be sure, he opposes the fence because of its impact on the Palestinian people, the damage to their livelihood, the restriction of their right to move about freely, the insult to their personal dignity. But to him, the fence is only a symptom of the real problem: the Palestinian leadership.
Of course, he says, Israelis are largely indifferent to Palestinian suffering. Of course Israelis do not really understand that the "ordinary, average Palestinian is a normal person who wants to wake up in the morning, send his children to school, care for his family, go to work, and just lead a normal life. He doesn't care about other things. The Palestinian Authority. Israel. They are not that important. What is important is not to disrupt normal life. And this fence disrupts normal life. It turns the life of many Palestinians into hell."
Nevertheless, the cause of the fence, Abu Toameh was sure, was not a desire on the part of Israeli majorities to rule over the Palestinians. If he were an Israeli Jew in these circumstances, he would favor a fence. Real responsibility for the construction of the fence, he is quite certain, lies with Yasser Arafat and the thoroughly cynical dictatorship he brought to the Palestinian people 10 years ago on the heels of the Oslo Accords.
But don't the Palestinians recognize Arafat as their legitimate leader? "Look," Abu Toameh says impatiently. "They want independence. They want their own state. But they don't want the corrupt and autocratic regime led by several hundred cronies of Arafat. They are stealing from the Palestinian people. I mean, what has the Palestinian Authority done for the Palestinian people over the last 10 years, since the signing of the Oslo accords? Basically, nothing." Nothing? "Yasser Arafat did not build one hospital. Or one school." Taken aback by his candor, I ask Abu Toameh whether he is speaking precisely. He responds sharply, "I am responsible for what I am saying. Arafat did not do anything. He did not rebuild one refugee camp. And the question is, one should ask, where did the money go? What happened? I mean, he got billions."
What is to be done? For Abu Toameh the critical first step is clear. "The Palestinian people's problem is their leadership. The Palestinian people's problem with the Israelis is a completely different issue. That could be solved in the long run. And it will be. But in order to solve that problem, and before we solve that problem with the Israelis, we need a proper Palestinian regime, we need proper government, proper institutions, democratic institutions, we need transparency. Basically the Palestinian Authority today is run as a private business by Yasser Arafat. And some of his aides. We need to liberate the Palestinian people, but from their leadership first, and then from the occupation."
YET IN THE SHORT TERM there is no avoiding the question of the security fence and the disputed territories. One afternoon, on the way back to my hotel on Mount Scopus, I ask the cabdriver to pass by Abu Dis, where the security fence is indeed a massive wall. When I ask him, as I do all Israeli cabdrivers, what his opinion of the fence is, he surprises me by responding in heavily Arabic-accented Hebrew. My Arab-Israeli cabdriver, a rarity, tells me that he is definitely opposed to it. En route through East Jerusalem, he says that the wall in Abu Dis has separated his family from his wife's parents, who live just on the other side. A visit that used to involve a few minutes' walk now takes a half hour to 45 minutes by car.
As we approach the wall, he points out shops on Israel's side that have been forced to close and tells me of many others on the Palestinian side that have gone out of business. We drive along the towering, menacing gray structure, 24 feet in height, that has been placed down the center of what used to be a main road, and he tells me that he doesn't know what the solution is, but it can't be this.
He knows there is blame to go around. He is disgusted by Arafat's weakness and ineffectiveness. I ask him whether he is ready for peace. "Ready?" he exclaims. "I live here. I work here. I work among the Arabs. I don't care who you are and what you are. I have children and a wife. I want to live. With dignity." I ask whether most Palestinians are like him. Without hesitation he says, "Yes." He pulls into a driveway not 10 yards from the fence. And then Abu Yosef, which he explains to me is what all his friends call him, invites me into his home, where I drink coffee with his wife and four shy, wide-eyed children.
I relate this encounter to Alex Yakobson, professor of classical history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a prominent Israeli public intellectual, who over the last decade has migrated from the dovish left to the pragmatic center. He listens patiently. He neither smiles nor frowns. He replies resolutely: "The fence, it is true, is not nice. It is not aesthetic. It is not convenient. I do not underestimate the genuine hardship that it is causing. But it's also not nice when a bus full of passengers is blown up and their limbs and organs--hands and legs and heads--fly for tens of meters in all directions. From a purely moral point of view, nobody's freedom of movement is more precious than somebody else's life."
That indeed is the voice of the Israeli center today. It is a voice that understands that what is not nice may be necessary and proper. It is an increasingly dominant voice in Israel. It is a voice in which anger, sadness, hardness, and humanity blend. Under the circumstances, it is the voice of reason.

Peter Berkowitz teaches at George Mason University School of Law and is a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
? Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

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Saddam's Ambassador to al Qaeda
From the March 1, 2004 issue: An Iraqi prisoner details Saddam's links to Osama bin Laden's terror network.
by Jonathan Schanzer
03/01/2004, Volume 009, Issue 24

A RECENTLY INTERCEPTED MESSAGE from Iraq-based terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi asking the al Qaeda leadership for reinforcements reignited the debate over al Qaeda ties with Saddam Hussein's fallen Baath regime. William Safire of the New York Times called the message a "smoking gun," while the University of Michigan's Juan Cole says that Safire "offers not even one document to prove" the Saddam-al Qaeda nexus. What you are about to read bears directly on that debate. It is based on a recent interview with Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, from 1997 to 2002, and is currently sitting in a Kurdish prison. Al-Shamari says that he worked for a man who was Saddam's envoy to al Qaeda.
Before recounting details from my January 29 interview, some caution is necessary. Al-Shamari's account was compelling and filled with specific information that would either make him a skilled and detailed liar or a man with information that the U.S. public needs to hear. My Iraqi escort informed me that al-Shamari has been in prison since March 2002, that U.S. officials have visited him several times, and that his story has remained consistent. There was little language barrier; my Arabic skills allowed me to understand much of what al-Shamari said, even before translation. Finally, subsequent conversations with U.S. government officials in Washington and Baghdad, as well as several articles written well before this one, indicate that al-Shamari's claims have been echoed by other sources throughout Iraq.
When I walked into the tiny interrogation room, it was midmorning. I had just finished interviews with two other prisoners--both members of Ansar al Islam, the al Qaeda affiliate responsible for attacks against Kurdish and Western targets in northern Iraq. The group had been active in a small enclave near Halabja in the Kurdistan region from about September 2001 until the U.S. assault on Iraq last spring, when its Arab and Kurdish fighters fled over the Iranian border, only to return after the war. U.S. officials now suspect Ansar in some of the bloodier attacks against U.S. interests throughout Iraq.
My first question to al-Shamari was whether he was involved in the operations of Ansar al Islam. My translator asked him the question in Arabic, and al-Shamari nodded: "Yes." Al-Shamari, who appears to be in his late twenties, said that his division of the Mukhabarat provided weapons to Ansar, "mostly mortar rounds." This statement echoed an independent Kurdish report from July 2002 alleging that ordnance seized from Ansar al Islam was produced by Saddam's military and a Guardian article several weeks later alleging that truckloads of arms were shipped to Ansar from areas controlled by Saddam.
In addition to weapons, al-Shamari said, the Mukhabarat also helped finance Ansar al Islam. "On one occasion we gave them ten million Swiss dinars [$700,000]," al-Shamari said, referring to the pre-1990 Iraqi currency. On other occasions, the Mukhabarat provided more than that. The assistance, he added, was furnished "every month or two months."
I then picked up a picture of a man known as Abu Wael that I had acquired from Kurdish intelligence. In the course of my research, several sources had claimed that Abu Wael was on Saddam's payroll and was also an al Qaeda operative, but few had any facts to back up their claim. For example, one Arabic daily, al-Sharq al-Awsat, stated flatly before the Iraq war, "all information indicates [that Abu Wael] was the link between al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime" but neglected to provide any such information. Agence France-Presse after the war cited a Kurdish security chief's description of Abu Wael as a "key link to Saddam's former Baath regime" and an "intelligence agent for the ousted president originally from Baghdad." Again, nothing was provided to substantiate this claim.
In my own analysis of this group, I could do little but weakly assert that Wael was "reportedly an al Qaeda operative on Saddam's payroll." The best reporting on Wael came from a March 2002 New Yorker article by Jeffrey Goldberg, who had visited a Kurdish prison in northern Iraq and interviewed Ansar prisoners. He spoke with one Iraqi intelligence officer named Qassem Hussein Muhammed, whom Kurdish intelligence captured while he was on his way to the Ansar enclave. Muhammed told Goldberg that Abu Wael was "the actual decision-maker" for Ansar al Islam and "an employee of the Mukhabarat."
"Do you know this man?" I asked al-Shamari. His eyes widened and he smiled. He told me that he knew the man in the picture, but that his graying beard was now completely white. He said that the man was Abu Wael, whose full name is Colonel Saadan Mahmoud Abdul Latif al-Aani. The prisoner told me that he had worked for Abu Wael, who was the leader of a special intelligence directorate in the Mukhabarat. That directorate provided assistance to Ansar al Islam at the behest of Saddam Hussein, whom Abu Wael had met "four or five times." Al-Shamari added that "Abu Wael's wife is Izzat al-Douri's cousin," making him a part of Saddam's inner circle. Al-Douri, of course, was the deputy chairman of Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council, a high-ranking official in Iraq's armed forces, and Saddam's righthand man. Originally number six on the most wanted list, he is still believed to be at large in Iraq, and is suspected of coordinating aspects of insurgency against American troops, primarily in the Sunni triangle.
Why, I asked, would Saddam task one of his intelligence agents to work with the Kurds, an ethnic group that was an avowed enemy of the Baath regime, and had clashed with Iraqi forces on several occasions? Al-Shamari said that Saddam wanted to create chaos in the pro-American Kurdish region. In other words, he used Ansar al Islam as a tool against the Kurds. As an intelligence official for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (one of the two major parties in northern Iraq) explained to me, "Most of the Kurdish fighters in Ansar al Islam didn't know the link to Saddam." They believed they were fighting a local jihad. Only the high-level lieutenants were aware that Abu Wael was involved.
Al-Shamari also told me that the links between Saddam's regime and the al Qaeda network went beyond Ansar al Islam. He explained in considerable detail that Saddam actually ordered Abu Wael to organize foreign fighters from outside Iraq to join Ansar. Al-Shamari estimated that some 150 foreign fighters were imported from al Qaeda clusters in Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and Lebanon to fight with Ansar al Islam's Kurdish fighters.
I asked him who came from Lebanon. "I don't know the name of the group," he replied. "But the man we worked with was named Abu Aisha." Al-Shamari was likely referring to Bassam Kanj, alias Abu Aisha, who was a little-known militant of the Dinniyeh group, a faction of the Lebanese al Qaeda affiliate Asbat al Ansar. Kanj was killed in a January 2000 battle with Lebanese forces.
Al-Shamari said that there was also contact with the Egyptian "Gamaat al-Jihad," which is now seen as the core of al Qaeda's leadership, as well as with the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which bin Laden helped create in 1998 as an alternative to Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA). Al-Shamari talked of Abu Wael's links with Turkey's "Jamaa al-Khilafa"--likely the group also known as the "Union of Islamic Communities" (UIC) or the "Organization of Caliphate State." This terror group, established in 1983 by Cemalettin Kaplan, reportedly met with bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1997, and later sent cadres there to train. Three years before 9/11, UIC plotted to crash a plane into Ankara's Ataturk Mausoleum on a day when hundreds of Turkish officials were present.
Al-Shamari stated that Abu Wael sometimes traveled to meet with these groups. All of them, he added, visited Wael in Iraq and were provided Iraqi visas. This corroborates an interview I had with a senior PUK official in April 2003, who stated that many of the Arab fighters captured or killed during the war held passports with Iraqi visas.
Al-Shamari said that importing foreign fighters to train in Iraq was part of his job in the Mukhabarat. The fighters trained in Salman Pak, a facility located some 20 miles southeast of Baghdad. He said that he had personal knowledge of 500 fighters that came through Salman Pak dating back to the late 1990s; they trained in "urban combat, explosives, and car bombs." This account agrees with a White House Background Paper on Iraq dated September 12, 2002, which cited the "highly secret terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations."
Abu Wael also sent money to the aforementioned al Qaeda affiliates, and to other groups that "worked against the United States." Abu Wael dispensed most of the funds himself, al-Shamari said, but there was also some cooperation with Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
Zarqawi, as the prisoner explained, was al Qaeda's link to Iraq in the same way that Abu Wael was the Iraqi link to al Qaeda. Indeed, Zarqawi (who received medical attention in Baghdad in 2002 for wounds that he suffered from U.S. forces in Afghanistan) and Abu Wael helped Ansar al Islam prepare for the U.S. assault on its small enclave last year. According to al-Shamari, Ansar was given the plan from the top Iraqi leadership: "If the U.S. was to hit [the Ansar base], the fighters were directed to go to Ramadi, Tikrit, Mosul . . . Faluja and other places." This statement agreed with a prior prisoner interview I had with the attempted murderer of Barham Salih, prime minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. This second prisoner told me that "Ansar had plans to go south if the U.S. would attack."
Al-Shamari said the new group was to be named Jund ash-Sham, and would deal mainly in explosives. He believed that Zarqawi and Abu Wael were responsible for some of the attacks against U.S. soldiers in central Iraq. "Their directives were to hit America and American interests," he said.
Al-Shamari claimed to have had prior information about al Qaeda attacks in the past. "I knew about the attack on the American in Jordan," he said, referring to the November 2002 assassination of USAID official Lawrence Foley. "Zarqawi," he said, "ordered that man to be killed."
These are some of the highlights from my interview, which lasted about 45 minutes.
I heard one other salient Abu Wael anecdote in an earlier interview during my eight-day trip to Iraq. That interview was with the former tenth-in-command for Ansar al Islam, a man known simply as Qods. In June 2003, just before he was arrested and put in the jail where I met him, Qods said that he saw Abu Wael. After the war, Abu Wael dispatched him from an Ansar safe house in Ravansar, Iran, to deliver a message to his son in Baghdad. The message: Ansar al Islam leaders needed help getting back into Iraq. It was only then, he said, when he met Abu Wael's son, that he learned of the link between the Baathists and al Qaeda.
Qods told me that he was angry with the leaders of Ansar for hiding its ties to Saddam. "Ansar had lots of secret ties between the Baath and Arab leaders," he said.
The challenge now is to document the claims of these witnesses about the secret ties between Saddam, al Qaeda, and Abu Wael. A number of U.S. officials have indicated to me that there are other Iraqis who have similar stories to tell. Perhaps they can corroborate Abdul Rahman al-Shamari's account. Meanwhile, the U.S. deck of cards representing Iraq's 55 most wanted appears to be one card short. Colonel Saadan Mahmoud Abdul Latif al-Aani, aka Abu Wael, should be number 56.
Jonathan Schanzer is a terrorism analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of the forthcoming book "Al-Qaeda's Armies: Middle East Affiliates and the Next Generation of Terror."



? Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

>> HOT DOCUMENT?

http://www.rmp.gov.my/rmp03/040220scomi_eng.htm
PRESS RELEASE BY INSPECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE

IN RELATION TO INVESTIGATION ON THE ALLEGED PRODUCTION OF COMPONENTS

FOR LIBYA'S URANIUM ENRICHMENT PROGRAMME.





INTRODUCTION


On the evening of 10 Nov 2003, two intelligence representatives from the United States and Britain, i.e. the CIA and the MI6, met the Director of the Special Branch, Bukit Aman. The focus of their discussion was the ongoing investigation related to the international network that is suspected of being involved in the transfer of nuclear technology to third countries. Both the representatives asked for the co-operation of the Special Branch to prevent the spread of nuclear technology. They also provided information relevant for joint action.



INFORMATION


2. Among the informations passed are the following:



2.1 Involvement of a nuclear scientist in PAKISTAN



Alleged that a Pakistani nuclear arms expert was involved in the "onward proliferation of Pakistani nuclear technology to third countries, notably LIBYA."



2.2 BSA TAHIR



Alleged that BSA TAHIR, a SRI LANKAN businessman based in DUBAI was a trusted and close confidante of the arms expert and was actively involved in supplying centrifuge components for LIBYA's uranium-enrichment programme; and



2.3 SCOMI PRECISION ENGINEERING SDN BHD (SCOPE)



Alleged that BSA TAHIR, who was involved in the business of SCOPE had used the company to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment programme. However, investigations have revealed that the components, on their own, cannot form a complete centrifuge unit. In this context, it has to be noted that SCOPE is a subsidiary of SCOMI GROUP BHD, i.e. a company involved in the petroleum services industry. As a subsidiary, SCOPE is also involved in precision engineering services which involves the production of components for a variety of equipments including parts for cars, petroleum and gas.



3. In relation to this, the Special Branch was also informed that on 4 Oct 2003, a ship named BBC China, owned by a GERMAN company, was examined in the port of Taranto, ITALY, where 5 containers bound for LIBYA were confiscated because they were believed to contain components related to the Libyan uranium enrichment programme. The components were said to have been packed in wooden boxes with the SCOPE logo on them. With this development a request was made to assist with the investigations related to the activities of BSA TAHIR and his connection with the Pakistani scientist in view of the "intense interest in this matter at the highest levels of the US/UK governments".



4. Following this development, the police launched an investigation to find out the real situation and it's implication to the interest and security of MALAYSIA.



BRIEFING


5. Pursuant to this investigation, the Prime Minister was briefed on 13 Nov 2003. He ordered a detailed and transparent investigation to be expedited. At the same time, the Inspector-General of Police was informed. He gave an order to continue with the investigation had been given.





POLICE INVESTIGATIONS


6. In conducting this investigation, the Special Branch, took into consideration the above-mentioned allegations and focused on the following aspects:-



6.1 The allegation that BSA TAHIR had played the role of a middle man in supplying certain centrifuge components from MALAYSIA for LIBYA's uranium-enrichment programme;



6.2 The allegation against SCOPE; and



6.3 Other related information.



7. As a responsible member state of the United Nations (UN), it is MALAYSIA's responsibility to investigate and inform on any activity which involves nuclear proliferation. In relation to this, MALAYSIA is cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an agency under the UN, which is responsible for the enforcement of rules and regulations controlling nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This is to ensure that the investigations are thorough and free of doubt. In relation to this, two preliminary reports were given to the Department of Safeguards, IAEA in VIENNA through the cooperation and help of the Director-General of the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) MALAYSIA and an officer with Malaysia's Institute of Nuclear Technology Research (MINT). One complete report will also be handed to IAEA to assist the agency to carry out investigations on individuals or companies outside MALAYSIA suspected to be involved in related activities.







BACKGROUND OF BSA TAHIR


8. BSA TAHIR, whose full name is BUHARY SEYED ABU TAHIR, is 44 years old and a citizen of SRI LANKA and a businessman based in DUBAI. BSA TAHIR and his brother own a company i.e. SMB GROUP, DUBAI where he is the Group Managing Director. In 1998, BSA TAHIR married a MALAYSIAN woman and gained permanent residency in MALAYSIA. SMB GROUP started as a family company in 1980 and is now involved in the computer and IT fields. Generally, BSA TAHIR spends time overseeing his businesses in DUBAI and only returns to MALAYSIA, once in a while, to visit his wife's family or look for business opportunities.



9. Upon his father's death in 1985, BSA TAHIR took over the management of SMB and in the process visited PAKISTAN and succeeded in getting contracts to sell air conditioning equipment to Khan Research Laboratory (KRL). During this time, BSA TAHIR became acquainted with the Pakistani nuclear expert. At the same time, BSA TAHIR got to know middlemen from other countries, including EUROPE, who were involved in supplying uranium centrifuge components on behalf of the Pakistani nuclear expert.



MODUS OPERANDI


10. Investigation showed that the supply of components by middlemen was carried out in a discreet manner and involved suppliers from other countries to blur the sources of the components. Some of the suppliers were believed to be aware that these components could be for uranium enrichment centrifuges. Generally these suppliers mostly from Europe, were those who had had dealings with the nuclear expert since the 1980s, at a time when PAKISTAN was developing its nuclear technology. There were a number of individuals and companies which supplied the components but were unaware of the implications because some of the components were similar to components used in oil drilling, water treatment and equipment for several other general use.



EARLY INVOLVEMENT - SUPPLY OF CENTRIFUGE TO IRAN


11. During investigations, BSA TAHIR alleged that his involvement with the nuclear expert started sometime in 1994/1995. That year, the latter had asked BSA TAHIR to send two containers of used centrifuge units from PAKISTAN to IRAN. BSA TAHIR organized the transshipment of the two containers from DUBAI to IRAN using a merchant ship owned by a company in IRAN. BSA TAHIR said the payment for the two containers of centrifuge units, amounting to about USD$3 million was paid in UAE Dirham currency by the Iranian. The cash was brought in two briefcases and kept in an apartment that was used as a guesthouse by the Pakistani nuclear arms expert each time he visited DUBAI.





BACKGROUND TO THE INVOLVEMENT WITH LIBYA


12. From what BSA TAHIR could recall, LIBYA had contacted the nuclear arms expert in 1997 to obtain help and expertise in the field of uranium-enrichment centrifuge. Several meetings between the arms expert and representatives from LIBYA took place:-



12.1 Meeting in ISTANBUL sometime in 1997. During this meeting, the nuclear arms expert was accompanied by BSA TAHIR while LIBYA was represented by MOHAMAD MATUQ MOHAMAD and another person known only as KARIM. During this meeting, the Libyans asked the arms expert to supply centrifuge units for LIBYA's nuclear programme; and


12.2 About 1998 to 2002. During this time, several meetings were held between the arms expert, accompanied by BSA TAHIR and the Libyans headed by MOHAMAD MATUQ MOHAMAD. One discussion was held in Casablanca, MOROCCO and several discussions in DUBAI.


13. As a result of these meetings, the following progress were made:-



13.1 Around 2001, the nuclear arms expert informed BSA TAHIR that a certain amount of UF6 (enriched uranium) was sent by air from PAKISTAN to LIBYA. BSA TAHIR could not remember the name of the Pakistan Airlines which transported the uranium;



13.2 Year 2001/2002. The nuclear arms expert informed BSA TAHIR that a certain number of centrifuge units were sent to LIBYA directly from PAKISTAN by air. There is a possibility that the design of the centrifuge units that were sent were of the P1 model, i.e. a DUTCH designed model;



13.3 Project Machine Shop 1001. This was a project to set up a workshop in LIBYA to make centrifuge components which could not be obtained from outside LIBYA. The machines for the workshop were obtained from SPAIN and ITALY. BSA TAHIR said the middleman involved in this project was PETER GRIFFIN, a BRITISH citizen who is believed to have once owned Gulf Technical Industries (GTI) based in DUBAI. PETER GRIFFIN is said to be retired and living in FRANCE. The management of GTI has been taken over by his son PAUL GRIFFIN. BSA TAHIR also said that the plans for the Machine Shop 1001 was prepared by PETER GRIFFIN.





NETWORKING


14. BSA TAHIR said that PAKISTAN's need to produce nuclear weapons became urgent after INDIA tested its nuclear weapon on 18 May 1974. In view of this, the Kahuta Plant was set up and the nuclear arms expert was forced to get equipment discreetly from developed nations, especially Europe. In the process, he developed contacts to get the needed material from several countries. This had to be done discreetly because PAKISTAN had to develop a nuclear weapon for national defence after INDIA's nuclear test received opposition from many Western countries. Amid these difficulties, the nuclear expert successfully developed a network of middlemen that, not only involved BSA TAHIR, but also several people and companies from Europe seeking to make profits by selling certain materials and equipment. However, it was a loose network, without a rigid hierarchy, or a head and a deputy head as was alleged.



15. According to BSA TAHIR, some of the middlemen appeared to have known the nuclear expert for a long while and some amongst them knew him when he was in the NETHERLANDS. Among the middlemen alleged to have links with him are:-



15.1 GERMANY



Late HEINZ MEBUS, an engineer. He is alleged to have been involved in discussions between the nuclear arms expert and IRAN to supply centrifuge designs about 1984/85.



15.2 GOTTHARD LERCH, a German citizen residing in Switzerland. GOTTHARD LERCH once worked for LEYBOLD HERAEUS, a German company that is alleged to have produced vacuum technology equipment. GOTTHARD LERCH is alleged to have tried to obtain supplies of pipes for the Machine Shop 1001 Project by sourcing from SOUTH AFRICA but failed to obtain it even though payment had been made by LIBYA earlier.



15.3 TURKEY



GUNAS JIREH, a citizen of TURKEY who had once worked for the German company Siemens. GUNAS JIREH is alleged to have supplied aluminium casting and dynamo to LIBYA at the request of the nuclear arms expert;



15.4 SELIM ALGUADIS, a citizen of TURKEY. Also said to be an engineer. Alleged to have supplied electrical cabinets and power supplier-voltage regulator to LIBYA. Two weeks after action against the ship BBC China in Taranto, Italy on 4 Oct 2003, BSA TAHIR is alleged to have arranged the transshipment of electrical cabinets and power supplier-voltage regulator to LIBYA through DUBAI on behalf of SELIM ALGUADIS.





15.5 UNITED KINGDOM



PETER GRIFFIN, a citizen of UNITED KINGDOM who has business interests in DUBAI and currently residing in FRANCE. Alleged to have supplied the lay-out plan for the Machine Shop 1001 as a workshop to enable LIBYA to produce centrifuge;



15.6 About 2001/2002, PETER GRIFFIN is alleged to have supplied a lathe machine to LIBYA for the Machine Shop 1001 Project. After that PETER GRIFFIN arranged to send 7 to 8 LIBYAN technicians to SPAIN, twice, to attend courses on how to operate the machine. At the same time, PETER GRIFFIN is also said to have supplied an ITALIAN - made furnace to LIBYA for the workshop. Usually, lathe machines are used to make cylindrical objects, while the furnace is essential in the process of heating and refining during the manufacture of certain components;



15.7 SWITZERLAND



FRIEDRICH TINNER, mechanical engineer, alleged to have had dealings with the nuclear arms expert since 1980s. FRIEDRICH TINNER was reported to have prepared certain centrifuge components, including safety valves, and he sourced many of the materials that were made in several companies in Europe. FRIEDRICH TINNER did not keep the stock himself but arranged for the supply to reach DUBAI and then on to LIBYA. FRIEDRICH TINNER is also the President of CETEC, a company in SWITZERLAND; and



15.8 URS FRIEDRICH TINNER is the son of FRIEDRICH TINNER. URS TINNER is a consultant arranged by BSA TAHIR to set up the SCOPE factory in SHAH ALAM. He was actively involved in the manufacturing operations in the SCOPE factory. (See Passport | Work Permit)



16. Although the individuals above were alleged to have been involved, the governments of the countries concerned and some of the companies involved which supplied the components to the individuals above were unaware of the real use of the components.



ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SCOPE


17. The Special Branch also investigated the allegation that BSA TAHIR had used SCOPE and its business to manufacture certain parts of the centrifuge unit. A check on Malaysia's Security Commission records show that SCOPE or Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn. Bhd. was set up as a subsidiary to Scomi Group on 4 Dec 2001. Before SCOPE was set up as a subsidiary of Scomi, it was known as Prisma Wibawa Sdn. Bhd. (PWSB). At first, PWSB had no production facility but after SCOPE was set up, a production facility was set up in 2001.



18. SCOPE's business is precision engineering services. Generally, SCOPE gets orders from a number of companies to supply parts or components for vehicle parts and machining high precision components. The work involved machining parts such as cutting, turning and milling. The SCOPE factory is located in SHAH ALAM and has a permanent staff of about 30 people. As such, it is not a very big factory or a complex when compared with other factories.



19. Results of the investigation according to chronology is as follows:-



ROLE OF BSA TAHIR


19.1 Sometime in 2001, BSA TAHIR is alleged to have planned to manufacture components with GUNAS JIREH in TURKEY. However, BSA TAHIR later changed his mind and offered a new business plan said to be legitimate to produce components for petroleum and gas to SCOPE. The staff were under the impression that the production was for petroleum and gas intended for DUBAI.



ROLE OF URS FRIEDRICH TINNER


19.2 Following this development, BSA TAHIR sent URS FRIEDRICH TINNER as a consultant to the SCOPE factory with the aim of giving expert advice on how to manufacture components in a business that was deemed legitimate.



19.3 URS FRIEDRICH TINNER or URS TINNER, as he is better known, is 39 years old and is the son of FFRIEDRICH TINNER. URS TINNER was made a full-time technical consultant to SCOPE starting Apr 2002 on the recommendation of BSA TAHIR. According to BSA TAHIR, URS TINNER was recommended after PETER GRIFFIN was found unsuitable for the job. Before this, PETER GRIFFIN presented a feasibility study recommending, among others, the type of machinery needed. One of the machinery, a Cincinnati Hawk 150 Machining Centre, is the same as that purchased and installed by URS TINNER. This evidence was found in a document in the nature of a brief note allegedly signed by PETER GRIFFIN himself dated 10 Mar 2001.



19.4 As a consultant, URS TINNER was responsible in importing and setting up the machine that was bought through the services of his father, FRIEDRICH TINNER. There were also machines imported through Traco Company, SWITZERLAND, owned by MARCO TINNER, the brother of URS TINNER. Among the types of machines that were bought and fixed by URS TINNER are CNC Lathe Hawk (Cincinnati) from the UNITED KINGDOM, CNC Machining Center Arrow 500 (Cincinnati), also from the UNITED KINGDOM, CNC Lathe Mexica 590 (Cazeneuve) in FRANCE and Emco PC Turn 155 from UNITED KINGDOM. Two other machines made in TAIWAN i.e. Automated Bandshaw Cutting Machine (Averizing) and Universal Tool Grinder (Monaset) were bought from local agents.



20. Throughout the time he was in the SCOPE factory, URS TINNER was seen by SCOPE staff as carrying out his duties with care and would always take back his component drawings once a component was finished. URS TINNER is also alleged to have said that he was doing that to safeguard trade secrets. At that time, his explanation was accepted by the staff. No suspicions were aroused.



21. Many SCOPE staff also said that URS TINNER would erase all technical drawings that were kept in the computer at the SCOPE factory. In Oct 2003, URS TINNER ended his term of service at the SCOPE factory and just before this, is said to have taken the hard-disc of the company's computer that was designated for his use. URS TINNER is also said to have taken his personal file from the SCOPE factory's records. This gave the impression that URS TINNER did not wish to leave any trace of his presence there and wanted to ensure that the technical drawings did not fall into the hands of the SCOPE factory staff. However, URS TINNER left behind a machine, i.e. a manual turning machine. It was a 1948 model made in Schaublins, SWITZERLAND. This machine was never used .



22. The SCOPE staff did not know that on 4 Oct 2003, a ship, BBC China, was examined in the port of Taranto, ITALY where a total of 5 containers bound for LIBYA were confiscated because they were alleged to contain components for certain parts of a centrifuge unit. In fact, URS TINNER left his position as a consultant in SCOPE also in Oct 2003.



MATERIAL FOR MANUFACTURING COMPONENTS


23. The investigations show that the raw materials for making the components were obtained from a German subsidiary company i.e. Bikar Metal Pte Ltd in SINGAPORE. A total of 300 metric tons of aluminium grade 6061 and 6082 were bought and obtained from Bikar Metal in the form of round bars or round tubes. These materials are not controlled items. Therefore, URS TINNER recommended the purchase and this did not give rise to any concern or suspicion among the SCOPE staff.



MANUFACTURE AND EXPORT



24. The materials obtained from Bikar Metal i.e. aluminium round tube and aluminium round bar are semi-finished products that were sent to the SCOPE factory in SHAH ALAM for machining to be made into components for export. The order from BSA TAHIR was a one-off production estimated at about RM13 million and was sent in four stages to DUBAI. This was not a long-term contract on a continuing basis.



25. The SCOPE factory records show that a total of 14 types of components were manufactured. The components were sent in four stages i.e. in the month of Dec 2002 to Aug 2003. All four shipments were sent to DUBAI to Aryash Trading Company.



26. Though a document, delivery note/packing list, dated 1 Aug 2002 (Appendix "A") shows that SCOPE had sent a shipment addressed to Gulf Technical Industries LCC, P.O. Box 29576, Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, the consignment was directed to Desert Electrical Equipment Factory, P.O.Box 51209, DUBAI on the instructions of URS TINNER. Documents related to the delivery to Desert Electrical Equipment Factory is as at Appendix "B".



27. From the document retrieved such as `delivery note and packing list', it has been found that SCOPE only shipped the components to DUBAI. No document was traced that proved SCOPE had delivered or exported the said components to LIBYA. Only BSA TAHIR and URS TINNER are said to know any preparation or arrangements to LIBYA.



SEARCH ON BBC CHINA VESSEL



28. As explained, on 4 October 2003, a vessel, BBC CHINA, was searched at the Taranto port, ITALY where a total of 5 containers to LIBYA was seized following allegations it contained certain components for `centrifuge.' The containers were sent by BSA TAHIR from DUBAI. Several items inside the container that is said to be components of a `centrifuge' are as follows :



Description Part Numbers Total

28.1 Casing 4 2,208

28.2 Molecular Pump 5 2,208

28.3 Top spacer 6 608

28.4 Positioner 8 10,549

28.5 Top end 9 1,680

28.6 Crash Ring 12 2,208

28.7 Stationary Tube 59 1,056

28.8 Clamp holder 73 400

28.9 Flange 77 4,525



29. All the above items, were made of `quality aluminium' and were in wooden boxes with the SCOPE logo. This was part of the `transshipment' delivered by SCOPE to Aryash Trading Company, DUBAI. The shipment of the items or components by BSA TAHIR to LIBYA via the vessel BBC CHINA was outside the knowledge of the management of SCOPE.



30. Photographs of the above items or components was shown to local experts at the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB), which is responsible for the implementation of guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) connected with `IAEA safeguard system' in MALAYSIA, and also the Malaysian Institute of Nuclear Technology Research (MINT). They admitted that trained eyes like theirs found it difficult to positively confirm that the seized components were part of a `centrifuge' unit. This is because the said components could also be used by other industries besides Nuclear Technology. It was important and necessary to know the existence of a secret international network that planned to supply centrifuge components to LIBYA before making any assumptions on its use. In relation to this, it is appropriate to extract the AELB view on the seized components:



"The sets of graphic images presented, it may be parts of many possible mechanical device or devices. These parts could easily be fitted into many industrial or home components. Without knowing the full or a significant portion of the total of sub assembly no definitive use of assignment of the possible device may be made"



(Photographs of components seized from BBC CHINA is as at Appendix "C")



OTHER INFORMATION CONNECTED TO THE ACTION AGAINST THE VESSEL BBC CHINA



31. The action against vessel BBC CHINA should also be viewed with scepticism in the light of the following allegations made by BSA TAHIR:



31.1 BSA TAHIR claimed that' together with the seized components on board BBC CHINA on October 4, 2003, was a consignment sent by GUNAS JIREH, a Turkish national who supplied `aluminum casting and dynamo' to LIBYA for its `machine shop 1001' project. These items were delivered through DUBAI using the services of TUT Shipping (TS) via vessel BBC CHINA. It is surprising that the consignment from GUNAS JIREH direct to LIBYA was allowed without any action; and



31.2 Two weeks after action taken against BBC CHINA, BSA TAHIR claimed to have arranged a `transshipment of electrical cabinet and power supplier-voltage regulator' to LIBYA through DUBAI on behalf of SELIM ALGUADIS. These transshipment too arrived in LIBYA without any obstruction and this is unusual. SELIM ALGUADIS is said to have known AQK since the 1980s'.



SCOPE'S STATUS



32 In general, the investigations revealed the following :



32.1 That the management of SCOPE were unaware that the exported components were part of certain centrifuge unit for LIBYA. The management of SCOPE considered it a legitimate business deal. To untrained eyes, such components would not raise any concern as the components are similar to components that could be used by the `petrol -chemical industry' and `water treatment' and various other industries.



32.2 SCOPE obtained the semi-finished product to produce the said components from a German company Bikar Metal and this gives the impression that these items are not controlled items. In view of the foregoing, the work that was carried out on the semi-finished product is legitimate and does not give rise to suspicion.



32.3 BSA TAHIR and URS TINNER did not declare the use of the component or the true nature of the business. Moreover, the components that were confiscated cannot be used as one complete unit of centrifuge. Vital components such as rotor motor or in technical terms rotating components were not among the components seized. Besides, SCOPE does not have the ability or the technical know how to produce it. It must be stressed that rotating components are vital for a centrifuge unit for the process of uranium enrichment. To build one centrifuge unit, a number of sophisticated components are needed and SCOPE only prepared 12 types of components. In fact, SCOPE was misled into manufacturing the components for dual purposes for the petroleum and gas industry. As of now no factory in Malaysia is capable of manufacturing a complete centrifuge unit, what more, the construction of hundreds or thousands of centrifuges.



32.4 To SCOPE, the alleged manufacturing of components for centrifuges was a one-off production worth an estimated RM13 million. This means SCOPE did not receive any further orders and, as such, the manufacturing of such components is not its core business. As such, claims that the Malaysian authorities have shut down one of the network's largest plant has been exaggerated.



33. In this context it is worthy to note that Malaysia is a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). NPT in general oversees control over nuclear materials like uranium, thorium and plutonium. Manufacturing, using or importing and exporting of uranium and plutonium and also other materials like thorium that can be converted into uranium are controlled by the NPT. All nations, including Malaysia, who are signatories to the NPT are required to report all inventories, and also the import and export of nuclear materials, to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) based in Vienna, Austria as the IAEA is the enforcement agency to the NPT. However, it has no control over nuclear equipments such as centrifuge components. As such SCOPE or Malaysia has not broken any of the NPT rules, as it is not among the listed items of the NPT. Besides, Malaysia has yet to sign the Additional Protocol to the IAEA's enforcement control agreement. In general, this Additional Protocol ensures control over specific nuclear equipment like single-use items that covers materials such as centrifuge for uranium enrichment. However, this Additional Protocol does not cover dual-use items like centrifuge for petrochemical, water treatment and the use in molecular biology for protein separation for health. Therefore, Malaysia, which is not a party to the Additional Protocol, has not violated any of the provision in the Additional Protocol because the seized components at the Port of Taranto in Italy were basic components and not complete centrifuge unit for uranium enrichment. Moreover, under Malaysian laws under the Atomic Energy Licensing Act (Act 304) there is no provision under the law for the control of such components that were seized.



34. From the explanation above, it is clear that SCOPE has not violated any law under the NPT, Additional Protocol and also the Malaysian law under the AEL (Act 304). What is clear is that most individuals involved in the networking are from Europe whose countries are signatories to the Additional Protocol and also members of the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG). As such, these countries are governed by the rules and regulations that have been set including reporting any transaction of specific materials for the use of nuclear to the IAEA. Germany has signed the Additional Protocol on 22 September 1998 and also a member of the NSG. Therefore, it is the responsibility of Bikar Metal to report to the German Government and also to the IAEA if semi-finished products that was supplied to SCOPE had been listed as a controlled item.



CONCLUSION



35. The police, in handling the investigation took an open and transparent approach. In this context, a full and complete report in connection with the investigation will be submitted to the AELB Malaysia to be reported to IAEA, an agency under the United Nations. This is in line with Malaysia's policy in recognizing a multi-lateral approach under the aegis of the IAEA and rejecting a unilateral approach where investigations are monopolized by only certain countries. The Malaysian authorities are always ready to cooperate with the IAEA if there is a need for further investigation.


36. It is hoped that the IAEA will start investigations on several individuals from Europe allegedly involved in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Investigations undertaken by the Malaysian authorities prove the country's commitment to supporting efforts to curb the illegal transfer and proliferation of nuclear technology.



Released : 20 February 2004 0700hrs

>> PERVEZ DETAILS FROM FINANCIAL TIMES...

Musharraf retains ties with N Korea
By Andrew Ward in Seoul
Published: February 19 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: February 19 2004 4:00
Pakistan has been embarrassed by revelations that one of its scientists leaked nuclear secrets to North Korea, but it appears that General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, has not severed ties with the communist country that was once among Islamabad's favourite arms-trading partners.
North Korea's state media revealed yesterday that Gen Musharraf sent a birthday greeting to Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, when he turned 62 on Monday, together with flowers from the Pakistani embassy in Pyongyang. Gen Musharraf's message expressed hope that friendship between the countries would "strengthen ceaselessly", the report said.
The greeting followed the confession by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the pioneer of Pakistan's nuclear programme, that he secretly sold nuclear knowhow to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
In an interview with the Financial Times this week, Gen Musharraf denied allegations that Pakistan had provided nuclear expertise to North Korea in return for missile technology.
However, the extent of Pakistan's relationship with North Korea will come under fresh scrutiny next week when the US, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas gather in Beijing for a second round of talks about Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.
A priority for discussion will be the highly enriched uranium (HEU) programme that North Korea allegedly set up with help from Mr Khan.
Diplomats in Seoul said the US was privately putting pressure on Pakistan to provide information about Mr Khan's dealings with North Korea, to strengthen its negotiating position in next week's talks. "The big question is how much information has the US got from Pakistan?" said a senior Asian official.
"Washington needs to present some evidence that proves the HEU programme beyond doubt. "I am worried that the talks could be derailed by a clash over HEU."
Pyongyang's denials that it possesses an HEU programme have emerged as a serious obstacle to the diplomatic process because the US will not accept any settlement to end the nuclear crisis unless it includes dismantlement of the uranium enrichment facilities.
North Korea admits operating a plutonium-based nuclear programme and has offered to freeze it in return for economic rewards from the US. But Pyongyang has refused to discuss the alleged HEU programme.
It was the US allegation in October 2002 that North Korea was developing a clandestine HEU programme that caused the collapse of a 1994 arms-control deal, under which the plutonium-based facilities had been frozen. Since then, North Korea has withdrawn from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and resumed production and reprocessing of plutonium, with some estimates that Pyongyang could now possess enough nuclear material for up to eight bombs.


-----------------------------------------
Pakistani ring 'fed Libya nuclear parts'
By John Burton in Singapore, Stephen Fidler and Mark Huband in London and Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad
Published: February 20 2004 21:51 | Last Updated: February 20 2004 21:51
A Pakistani-led black-market network airlifted radioactive material to Libya in 2001 aboard a Pakistani airliner, a Malaysian police report said on Friday, as a new study from the international nuclear watchdog described a secret Libyan nuclear programme spanning two decades.
The International Energy Agency said Libya had successfully produced a small amount of plutonium and imported low- enriched uranium as part of its programme, diplomats who had seen the report said.
The IAEA's report, which will be considered by its board next week, discloses that Libya's nuclear abilities were further developed than UN inspectors had thought when its programme came to light last year. Libya agreed to give up its weapons of mass destruction programmes in December after negotiations with the US and Britain.
In the Malaysian report, the country's inspector-general of police said the airlifting to Libya of uranium hexafluoride, used as a feedstock for centrifuges that enrich uranium, took place in 2001.
The investigation into Malaysian involvement in the network, drawn largely from interviews from Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan-born businessmen at its heart, also says a number of centrifuge units - possibly Dutch-derived P-1 models - were sent direct by air to Libya from Pakistan in 2001-02.

In other disclosures, Mr Tahir said he had organised the shipment of two containers of used centrifuge units from Pakistan to Iran, via Dubai, in 1994-95. The cost was $3m.
The report says the shipment was made at the behest of a Pakistani scientist who also told Mr Tahir about the air shipments to Libya.
The scientist is not named, but is referred to on one occasion by the initials AQK. Abdul-Qadeer Khan, sometimes called the father of the Islamic atomic bomb, admitted this month he had given nuclear technology to other countries and was pardoned by General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president.
According to senior western and Pakistani officials, George Tenet, director of CIA, secretly paid a one-day visit to Pakistan last week to discuss the investigations into the network. The visit has not been confirmed by either of the two governments.

The Malaysian investigation began in November after an approach to the director of the Malaysian Special Branch, Bukit Aman, from representatives of the US Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6.
Components thought to be destined for Libya's uranium enrichment programme had been confiscated aboard a German ship in October. Five shipping containers carried components manufactured in Malaysia by Scope, a subsidiary of the Scomi Group.
The report absolved Scope, saying it had not violated Malaysian law. Scomi is owned by Kamaluddin Abdullah, the only son of Malaysia's prime minister, Abdullah Badawi.

Powell Says N. Korean Nuclear Work Invites `Calamity' (Update2)
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Princeton University audience that the U.S. will warn North Korea in talks next week that its failure to abandon its nuclear weapons program would be a ``sure way to calamity.''
Powell said the U.S. won't tolerate proliferation of nuclear weapons and will use ``a tough-minded diplomacy'' to persuade North Korea and other governments to give up such efforts.
``Nuclear weapons won't make North Korea more secure, proliferation of nuclear weapons won't make North Korea more prosperous,'' Powell said in the keynote address of a conference to mark the 100th birthday of former ambassador George Kennan, a shaper of U.S. containment policy toward the Soviet Union.
The U.S. will join delegations from South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in Beijing on Wednesday to revive discussions with North Korea aimed at dismantling dictator Kim Jong Il's nuclear weapons program.
North Korea says it wants a security guarantee in exchange for dismantling its arms program. The U.S. says North Korea first must begin dismantling the program in a way that can be verified before the U.S. and allies offer economic aid or the security guarantee.
At the root of the U.S. drive against regimes pursuing illicit nuclear work is preventing the ``fusion'' of such weapons with terrorist groups, Powell said.
``Terrorism is the preeminent danger of our age,'' he said. ``That is why defeating terrorism is our number one priority.''
Libya's Disclosure
Since the last round of North Korean talks ended without progress in August, Libya has revealed a more extensive nuclear ambition than was known to United Nations inspectors, and Pakistan said its top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had trafficked in nuclear-bomb materials.
Powell praised Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi for pledging to halt his pursuit of a nuclear bomb and shift toward improving the lot of the Libyan people through closer relations with the U.S. He also pointed to Iran's disclosure of its nuclear work to international inspectors.
Powell defended the U.S.-led war on Iraq, saying the world had seen Saddam Hussein use weapons of mass destruction on his own people and his neighbors, and the U.S., as well as other governments, believed for years that Iraq had the capability and resources to develop and maintain those arms.
``America did the right thing,'' Powell said, adding Hussein defied 12 years of United Nations resolutions to disarm.
`X' Article
Powell's motorcade was met by several dozen protesters standing in front of the university in Princeton's central Palmer Square yelling in megaphones and standing behind banners critical of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Kennan, a 1925 Princeton graduate, in 1947 penned the famous ``X'' article -- so-named because that's how Kennan signed it -- in the journal Foreign Affairs that laid out the so-called containment policy that became the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War.
Powell said he received a letter from Kennan when he took up the role of chief U.S. diplomat in 2001, and the two men have had a correspondence ever since. Kennan, who celebrated his centenary anniversary Monday, wasn't in the audience today.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Todd Zeranski in Princeton at Tzeranski@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor of this story: Glen Hall at
1966 or ghall@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: February 20, 2004 12:50 ES

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Moment of truth for China and the Pyongyang time bomb

By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
February 20, 2004
As the U.S. prepares to enter new six-power talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons threat, a question hangs in the air:
Will Beijing with its overwhelming whip hand over Pyongyang do the necessary?
The necessary is, of course, to meet U.S., Japanese, South Korean, and Russian demands it give up pursuit of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction [WMD] and submit to verifiable inspection.
Given North Korea's history of state-sponsored terrorism and traffic with international organized crime, Pyongyang now represents the most critical threat to world peace and stability. That threat could very well include WMD sales to non-state terrorists such as the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.
But this riddle is wrapped in an enigma, another equally poignant question: Will Washington force Beijing's hand?
The syllogism is not all that complicated: Beijing supplies some 80 percent of aid keeping bankrupt North Korea alive. China has old intimate ties to North Korea - most importantly to its military - going back to the Korean War. Beijing sourced much of Pyongyang's nuclear technology. China also has been complicit in the development and sale of Pyongyang's missiles to pariah states.
If the Beijing leaders chose, they could bring Pyongyang to heel. North Korea may be a rogue state, but it is a crippled, dependent rogue state.
It seems likely, in the diplomatic jargon, that the Chinese leadership is "conflicted" over the strategy it should pursue toward North Korea.
It does not want a collapsing regime disgorging a flood of refugees. It does not want a reunited Korea so long as South Korea is a growing source of development capital, technology rade. Nor would it want a strong united Korean state further complicating East Asian politics. And it might just want continuing harassment for the U.S. [and its Japanese ally - a trade-off in the continuing negotiations of a welter of issues between Washington and Beijing]. There is likely divided counsel between Beijing's new Fourth Generation ruling team and former Party leader Jiang Zemin, refusing to leave the stage, hanging on to his chairmanship of the all-powerful Central Military Commissions.
We are told, in an avalanche of propaganda and analysis, from Beijing but also from those in the U.S. who want to put the best face on Chinese motives, a new era of enlightened international collaboration emanates from Beijing. For example, now the second largest importer of oil, China, too, we are told, understands it has no interest in cutting its nose to spite its economic face.
Ignoring this kind of highly speculative geopolitical psychoanalysis which has often led to disaster, the reality is China must balance its interests as does every other power. At the moment, the U.S. relationship has paramountcy. Washington has enormous leverage. China's spectacular but fragile economic growth fragile because it encompasses less than 20 percent of its population, entirely based on exports, exports largely in the hands of American and other foreign corporations [selling to themselves for other markets], and dragging a bankrupt State Owned Enterprise sector and sieve-like financial structure. Its rising raw materials, components, and food import bill is largely paid by the enormous American trade surplus - probably totaling $135 billion last year - which pays deficits with South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Mideast and Southeast Asia. China is almost totally reliant on imported technology - most if from the U.S. China's nascent military modernization cannot yet give it sufficient thrust in its own backyard where it still faces the world's superpower.
The chips are, then, largely on the U.S. side of the table. But if the game is poker, the body language as well as the actual hand of the player is at issue.
In a recent Washington public airing, Assistant Sec. of State James Kelly laid out the argument of the U.S. for action - and sounded pretty tough. U.S. policy seemed emboldened by its recent success in the bolte face of Libya which for decades had flaunted U.S. and world opinion in pursuit of WMD. Tokyo - in spite of just making a huge oil deal with Iran against Washington's advice, justified because of Tehran's theoretical concessions to the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection regime - has begun to crack down on North Korea's second most valuable economic ties to Japan's large ethnic Korean community. South Korea continues to diddle, arguing against all evidence that appeasement will bring Pyongyang around. Russia tut-tuts [but has partially slowed its huge nuclear power involvement in Iran].
President Bush, in the midst of a political campaign, under fire from his Democrat opposition for his strong line on Iraq yet to vouchsafed by his opponents, faces a grim decision: whether to exert maximum influence on China [after he generously publicly supported its campaign against any inferred moves by Taiwan toward "independence"]. But if Beijing's game isn't called, the North Korean bomb appears likely to continue to tick.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

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Chinese marines show their strength

By Christopher Bodeen
Associated Press
SHANGHAI, China -- Elite Chinese marines deployed tanks, speedboats and helicopters in a display of amphibious fighting skills observed by military attaches from 56 nations, newspapers reported Friday.
Shanghai's Liberation Daily newspaper said the drill involved several hundred men and women marines dressed in camouflage uniforms. It said troops "utilized a variety of amphibious weaponry" in an "actual troop drill of a tactical background."
Media reports gave few details, as is typical of China's secretive military. The Liberation Daily said the exercise was staged at a "comprehensive large-scale training ground," but didn't say where.
Although the marines are considered a key component of any Chinese assault, there was no direct indication that Thursday's drill was targeted at rival Taiwan.
China insists Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to attack the island if it doesn't agree to unify with the mainland. During Taiwan's 1996 presidential elections, China held war games and test-fired missiles in an ultimately fruitless attempt to intimidate voters into not supporting candidates China disapproved of.
Tensions have been simmering between the two sides since Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian called for a referendum on whether Taiwan should increase its anti-missile defenses against China. The landmark vote will coincide with Taiwan's presidential election on March 20.
Photographs of the exercise showed troops with rifles running alongside amphibious tanks and speeding across the sea in open boats carrying about six people each. Another picture showed troops running down the rear loading ramps of a pair of Z-8 anti-submarine warfare helicopters.
The reports didn't say what countries the military attaches came from or why they had been invited to observe the drill. However, in recent years China has moved tentatively to boost military exchanges with other nations, and last year staged joint naval rescue exercises with India and Pakistan.
China's marines have been among the biggest beneficiaries of efforts to mold the country's sprawling 2.5 million-strong military into a modern fighting force equipped with high-technology weapons. They would be used to establish beachheads and perform commando operations in an attack on Taiwan or islands in the South China Sea that China claims as its own.
Observers of the Chinese military say the marines consist of 7,000-10,000 troops backed by amphibious tanks and armored personnel carriers, lightweight artillery, missiles, assault boats and hovercraft.
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Boeing slows work on tanker
By Dave Carpenter
Associated Press
CHICAGO -- Boeing Co. said Friday it is reducing efforts to convert its 767 planes for use as Air Force refueling tankers as a result of government reviews into the controversial program -- a move that will result in as many 150 job cuts at its plants in Wichita and Seattle.
CEO Harry Stonecipher said 600 Boeing employees at those locations will be shifted to other work as the company slows development on a delayed Air Force project that has been costing it about $1 million a day.
"Because important and detailed day-to-day dialogue with our customer is necessary to refine program requirements, we do not believe that continuing development work at the current level of effort is prudent for either the Air Force or Boeing," Stonecipher said in a written message to employees.
The cutback comes after the Pentagon ordered three additional reviews into Boeing's plan to lease and sell 100 jets to the Air Force for use as refueling tankers.
The Defense Department said earlier this month that the Air Force can't proceed with the contract -- already suspended since early December pending an investigation -- until reviews by the Pentagon general counsel, the Defense Science Board and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces are completed.
Those reviews are expected to take at least until May, according to the Defense Department.
The Pentagon's inspector general already had been looking into the case after questions arose last year about ethical issues surrounding the way Boeing pursued the multibillion-dollar contract.
Stonecipher said development efforts on the project will be slowed starting Monday, with key program elements kept intact while the federal reviews proceed. He cited the $270 million Boeing already spent on the tanker program through the end of 2003, not counting the million-dollar-a-day cost through 50 days of 2004.
About 100 contract employees in Wichita will be let go and up to 50 employees in Puget Sound will be laid off, he said.
"We deeply regret the difficulties that this slowdown will pose for our Boeing employees and those of our teammates," Stonecipher said.
Dick Ziegler, a spokesman for Boeing in Wichita, said the 100 contract engineers Boeing released come from various companies working on the tanker modification program.
In unrelated move, Boeing also issued 38 layoff notices Friday to Boeing employees in Wichita, Ziegler said. The 60-day notices are effective April 23. Friday was also the last day of work for 18 Boeing workers who had received earlier notices.
The tanker deal is considered crucial to keeping Boeing's slumping 767 production line alive. Merrill Lynch analyst Byron Callan said in a research report earlier Friday that if the tanker deal remains in limbo by early summer, Boeing likely will move to end production of the 767.
"This could be a close call," Callan said.
Boeing shares were down 9 cents at $44.43 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New panel to review pollution case
Congress, families push for attention to ongoing questions
By C. Mark Brinkley
Times staff writer
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. -- Responding to pressure from Congress and former Marines, the Corps is stepping up its investigation into polluted drinking water discovered more than 20 years ago in wells serving some family housing and other areas of Camp Lejeune, N.C.
An independent panel, convened at the direction of Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee, will review events and decisions occurring between the discovery of the pollution in 1980 and the closing of the wells in 1985.
"The panel is being convened to gather facts for the purpose of informing our Marines and their families who could have been affected," Hagee said in a statement released Feb. 20. "Continued questions from interested families and other parties, prompted us to examine the chronology of events with more scrutiny. In the course of this deeper examination, we realized additional facts needed to be acquired and reviewed. We must leave no stone unturned on this important issue."
Routine sampling of the drinking water at Camp Lejeune in 1980 turned up chemicals used to clean machinery and weapons, and others used in dry cleaning, in the wells of some base housing units. Those wells were not closed until 1985 and cleanup of the base and a nearby dry cleaner were placed on the national priorities list in 1989.
In 1999, officials from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry began searching for more than 14,000 children born to mothers who were pregnant at Camp Lejeune between 1968 and 1985. About 12,600 of those children were located, and surveys show that 103 of them may have suffered birth defects and childhood cancer linked to the polluted water.
Last year, after the preliminary findings were released, Marine officials said they would continue participating in the full ATSDR study through 2006. Under review are cases of childhood leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and such defects as spina bifida, anencephaly, cleft lip and cleft palate, according to the ATSDR report.
The full study will determine whether ingestion of these chemicals, known as volatile organic compounds, by pregnant women can cause these diseases and defects in their children. A 1997 public-health assessment by the agency concluded that such exposure was not likely to cause health problems in adults.
Critics long have countered that the Marine Corps should actively notify everyone who lived at the base -- a group that family advocates number in the hundreds of thousands -- during the years that the polluted wells were used. They also believe that some involved in the investigation actively covered up information for fear of potential lawsuits.
Of particular concern is the Corps' decision to wait until 1985 to close the wells.
The issues resurfaced in February media reports, prompting Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., to call on the Navy Department and the Department of Health and Human Services to notify anyone who might have been affected.
"I feel that it is entirely necessary to be as completely open, honest and candid with the Marines and their families who served in the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune," Jeffords wrote in a Feb. 10 letter to Navy Secretary Gordon England. "As a retired Navy captain, I believe the men and women who serve our country in uniform deserve the truth."
A similar letter went out the same day to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.
"A full assessment of the health consequences of the drinking water contamination at Camp Lejeune is long overdue and should begin as soon as practicable," Jeffords wrote. "The prevalence of childhood cancers and birth defects found in the July 2003 ATSDR Progress Report -- and the potential savings in the health and lives of ex-Marines and their families -- is too high to justify any further delay of a more complete study."
Marine officials said the panel will consist of three private-sector professionals with expertise in environmental, engineering and military command issues. The group will review documentation and interview former and current base officials.
"This will be done to clarify the sequence of events that led to the decisions made during the five-year period in question," Marine officials said in the statement. "The panel will operate independently and will have free and open access to all relevant information. The panel will not impact the work of the ongoing ATSDR study."
A report of the panel's findings is to be submitted to Hagee by Sept. 1.
"After reviewing the report, I will make every effort to conclude this matter in a way that is satisfactory to our Marines, their families and the general public," Hagee said in the statement. "The report and any resultant actions will be provided to the families, Congress and the general public as soon as practical."
The increased pressure has been a welcome sight for many family members, who have been campaigning for years to get a deeper investigation. Many have been approached in recent days by national media outlets working on stories about the circumstances surrounding the pollution.
"It's a series of ongoing stonewalling, lies, all kinds of crap," said retired Maj. Tom Townsend, whose son died of a heart defect 37 years ago. "These people are lying through their teeth ... and they're trying to dodge the liability issues."
Hundreds of former family members have filed legal tort claims against the Corps for redress, but still are waiting for a resolution.
Townsend said the Corps should take responsibility for its actions and decisions.
"When you go to Korea and Vietnam for them, and when you come home and they poison your children, it leaves you ticked off." h



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>> QUOTE - "MY MONEY"

Arafat: "They`re after me and my money!"

DEBKAfile`s Special Report
February 18, 2004, 5:09 PM (GMT+02:00)
For Arafat, cash only
Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) has been engaged in a last ditch attempt to rescue the European aid program to the Palestinians from total cutoff. Palestinian Authority's coffers, which depend on foreign handouts for 60 percent of their revenues, are depleted. American aid is already lost, since Washington vowed (as DEBKAfile reported exclusively last year) not to give the Palestinians a red cent until they hand over the killers of three CIA security men murdered in a roadside explosion in the Gaza Strip on October 15.
Now, the Americans are pushing hard for Europe to follow suit. The European Union is nonetheless continuing to pay the salaries of about 100,000 Palestinian Authority officials and security officers, but it has posed a key proviso: donations will no longer be handed over in cash to the PA - an invitation to the corrupt practices besetting Palestinian government - but transferred directly into the individual payees' banks accounts. Palestinian officials with no bank accounts will get no paychecks. Thus compete transparency will be assured. However, the Palestinian Authority shorn of its dollar and euro revenues cannot survive. Ironically, Israel continues to make its regular shekel remittances to the PA, a leftover from its undertakings under the defunct Oslo peace accords. This comes nowhere near covering the PA's budgetary shortfall.
Yasser Arafat and the heads of his Fatah faction and Tanzim militia predictably turned down the European proviso, and no wonder: a) To open an account and draw funds from the bank, Palestinian security men will have to show identification; b) they can no longer be forced by their commanders and Arafat to engage in terrorists activities in order to feed their families. As PA officers, they will receive their paychecks directly from the EU.
This Europeans' tough act, which puts the lid on many of Arafat's financial abuses, is intended to meet one of Washington's key demands and so test the chances of being let in on the Bush administration's coming moves in Iraq and the Middle East.
The Palestinian prime minister when he toured Europe last week announced the new arrangement was acceptable to his government. But on his return to Ramallah, he found Arafat had put a furious stop to his first and only autonomous action since assuming the premiership last November.
"They're gunning for me and they're after my money," Arafat spat out to his cronies. "And if we let them get away with it, they'll finish me off along with the entire Palestinian resistance movement!" he said referring to the Americans and Palestinian terrorism and their efforts to extinguish his suicide terror campaign.
According to DEBKAfile's Palestinian sources, since 400 Fatah members handed in their cards in protest against corruption in the Palestinian leadership, Arafat has come to believe that that the Americans are using the bank account stratagem as a tool to be rid of him.
Four developments fuel his suspicions:
1. Fatah and PA intelligence bodies did not pick up the slightest whiff of a protest move in the making. Signed by Fatah rank and file activists in total secrecy, the protest petition caught Arafat's spies by surprise. He therefore concluded it must have been the work of a foreign intelligence service.
2. The signers were sufficiently in the know about Arafat's affairs to correctly finger at least one of his close aides as responsible for the worse excesses in the PA. One was his former financial adviser, Mohammed Rashid - whom they describe as "the Kurd who controls the Palestinian national movement". The estranged Rashid has relocated his base from Ramallah to Cairo and London, where he is in business with another of Arafat's rivals, Mohammed Dahlan.
The fact that Rashid was named did not bother Arafat.
But the second name was a giveaway: Kharabi Sarsur, 64, Arafat's secret emissary, who holds the key to his personal cashbox. No ranking official in Palestinian-controlled territory dares mentioned this name aloud. The lowly Fatah operatives who mentioned Sarsur in their petition were hardly likely to know who he is. According to our sources, he is an important intelligence target - even more so than Arafat himself. Undercover agencies who want to find out what Arafat is up to keep an eye on Sarsur and, in particular, his disbursements of cash. Arafat is certain that only a major intelligence service had the inside knowledge necessary to "out" Sarsur.
3. French and EU authorities have started investigating his wife Suha's money-laundering activities in Paris, where she lives a life Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza can only dream of. Six months ago, no European in authority would have dared touch Mrs. Arafat. Now, she is a liability making him vulnerable as never before.The money trail is bound to lead from Paris back to the "rais" and the secret Swiss account to which he smuggled PA funds - thence, for the last ten months, in monthly transfers of $1 million each into Suha Arafat's Paris accounts.
Washington knows that Suha is sitting on large sums belonging to her husband and the PA, rated by financiers in West Europe as being in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Arafat believes the Americans persuaded the Europeans to open the investigation, expecting Suha to open up on his hidden wealth rather than go to jail.
4. Arafat has heard that a number of Palestinian bankers, some working within the PA and others in Arab countries, have been intercepted on recent visits to the United States with invitations for "clarification talks" with the FBI. Arafat, his money and secret accounts are the main topics of these clarifications.
Because of these developments, Arafat has come to believe that his final showdown with the United States has begun. He certainly does not propose to let either the Europeans or Ahmed Qureia get in the way of his fight for survival.
--------------------------------------------------
Time Runs out for Sharon's Gaza and Disengagement Plans
DEBKAfile Political Analysis

February 8, 2004, 7:59 PM (GMT+02:00)
Israel finds itself pulled simultaneously in two opposite directions.
Its newly-appointed director of national security, Giora Eiland, warned the Munich security conference Sunday, February 8, that the Palestinians' failure to join Israel in the US-backed road map to peace would leave Jerusalem no alterative other than to initiate unilateral disengagement that would lead to a decision to begin a process of separation between the two peoples. Eiland has been assigned with fleshing out Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan for pulling the two peoples apart. But at the same forum, Jordan's king Abdullah called for a US-led international alliance to use "some heavy-handedness" to bring Israel and the Palestinians together at the negotiating table.
Both directions, DEBKAfile's political sources find, are equally unrealistic.
First , the Bush administration has more urgent business on its mind these days than a peace plan that goes on and on and never arrives. Its energies are fully engaged in fending off election-year assaults on US intelligence prior to the Iraq war and the al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks and on its global strategies, while seeking glittering achievements to upstage John Kerry's meteoric challenge.
Second , the Palestinian Authority is in a state of collapse. The corrosive weight of 41 months of Yasser Arafat's violent confrontation with Israel has left in its wake chaotic administration, corruption, infighting and disaffection. On Saturday, February 7, more than 300 members of Arafat's ruling Fatah organization collectively handed in their membership cards in protest against bad leadership and corruption. The Palestinians are stuck in the rut of their suicide bombing offensive - 10 such attacks were foiled in January, one got through killing eleven aboard a Jerusalem bus. Their crisis-ridden leadership is no shape to respond to calls for peacemaking or even to care for its people's pressing needs for jobs and aid.
Under heavy pressure from president Hosni Mubarak in Cairo Sunday, February 6, the Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia finally agreed to get together with Sharon in ten days' time, but DEBKAfile's Palestinian sources warned that nothing would come of the meeting.
Third , Sharon's plans for disengagement and the evacuation of the Israeli civilian and military presence from the Gaza Strip - a go-it-alone strategy - could be popular if it were intelligently articulated and feasible. This is far from true at the moment. Many Israelis rubbed their eyes in distrust when they heard one of the great champions of Israeli settlement across the Green Line offering to evacuate the Gaza Strip against the advice of the military. Sharon qualified the offer; he would only go ahead with Washington's backing and only if the US-backed peace effort got nowhere. The first qualification foredooms the plan to failure, before he even climbs over the multiple hurdles of swinging his government, party and Knesset behind his plans and overcomes the controversy over if and how to conduct a referendum.
This is because the predecessors of Bush and Sharon - Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak - locked horns four years ago on the very subject of the dollars and cents cost of evacuating Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Clinton said not a cent would come from Washington. Someone then came up with a plan for the United States to buy entire settlements, lock, stock and barrel, and resell them at a nominal price to the Palestinians. No one bought into that real estate deal either.
The question of who will pay for the implementation of Sharon's Gaza evacuation plan, the resettling of settlers and redeployment of the military, remains unanswered.
Last week, deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert spent 24 hours in Washington, hard-selling the Gaza and disengagement programs to American leaders. He faced suspicions there, as at home, that the Gaza scheme is a stratagem to keep the West Bank communities in place and divert attention from the implications of bribe-taking hanging over the prime minister's head. All the same, the White House decided to send over two US officials for a closer look at the Sharon concept. Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and the senior director of the national security council, Elliot Abrams, are due in Jerusalem this week and will report on their impressions to the White House.
As a gesture to soften the White House's disapproval of its security barrier, which is integral to the concept, the Sharon government decided to lop 100 km off the 700 km of its final route by straightening out the loops curving into the West Bank. Less publicly, work on the fence has more or less tapered off; only the undisputed segments in the north have been completed.
However, the likelihood is that, even if Sharon's blueprints are found worth developing, they will not warrant serious attention in Washington until early 2005 after the US presidential election. By that time, the Middle East will be a different place calling for different plans. Sharon may have reason to rue the fact that he missed the American train when it rode through. Today, Washington's overriding interests lie in Iraq, Libya and Sudan, its long and deep strategic relations with the Arab world beginning to be relegated to the past.
This process is not lost on the 22-member Arab League. After a ten-day visit to Baghdad in December, a fact-finding mission returned deeply concerned by the power-sharing set-up they found and what they consider the undue autonomy awarded the Kurdish and Shiite Muslims. The mission warned that the geographic and ethnic federalism taking shape in Iraq is the prelude to dividing the country up in a way that seriously undercuts the share of the national cake granted the Sunni Muslim Arab community that was the backbone of the Saddam regime. These findings will be submitted to the Arab League's foreign ministers' session next month and later to an Arab summit.
But the Israeli prime minister errs if he counts on merging his plan to separate Israel from the Palestinian Arabs into America's disengagement from the Arab world, for two reasons:
1. Washington will never admit it is distancing itself from Arab interests, although its calls for democracy, freedom and reforms are generating that distance.
2. The White House does not want to see Israel involved in this process. Bush believes the Israelis, the Palestinians and the Arabs at large had their chance to enlist the US for a Middle East peace push on and after June 1, 2003, when he attended the Sharm el-Sheikh and Aqaba summits for that very purpose. Since seven months have gone by without a single significant step in that direction, he regards the Palestinians and the Arabs as having rejected his proffered hand and has turned his attention elsewhere. Israel too is seen in Washington as having wasted those precious seven months before pulling an innovative plan of action out of its hat.

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US Chases Saddam's Money Trail to Guerrilla War
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 144 Feb. 6, 2003
February 17, 2004, 10:46 PM (GMT+02:00)
Black hole in Iraq`s economy
Some revealing details are now emerging about the $1 billion Great Bank Heist which Saddam Hussein's henchmen staged at the Iraqi National Bank in Baghdad on March 19, hours before the US "shock and awe" air raids.
For instance, Saddam handwrote his cash demand on a plain sheet of paper and signed it in pencil. That sheet was among the documents US forces found in the deposed ruler's spider hole, when they captured him on December 12. The stack shed no light on the whereabouts of the ousted ruler's weapons of mass destruction but, once the simple codes were cracked, they held clues to some of the cash he had socked away and named power of attorney holders through whom he enjoys access to the loot.
Other documents in the pile, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, lifted the lid off the clandestine workings of the deep-hush 14th Directorate - Office of Special Operations - of the Dawairat al Mukhabarat al-Amah, or Department of General Intelligence. This dread department, known also as N-14, was responsible for running agents on clandestine and sensitive special operations outside the country - particularly assassinations. Its main training facility was located at Salman Pak, 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Baghdad. N-14 orchestrated the failed assassination of former President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait in April 1993.
The long hours its agents invested in acquiring language and orientation skills for blending into the countries of their missions came in useful after the US invasion of Iraq, when they were reassigned new duties as guardians of the deposed dictator's fortune, trustees for his worldwide financial and business empire with responsibility for remitting profits as directed.
These professional killers pose "behind enemy lines" in smart suits as non-Iraqi businessmen living under the false identities registered in their Saudi, US, British, Syrian or Egyptian passports.
One such Syrian businessman recently turned up at the national bank of Syria with a power of attorney note for $1.1billion of Iraqi funds on deposit there. The note, passed on to the Americans, proved to have been written with the "Saddam pencil." But the "Syrian businessman", presumed until then to divide his time between Frankfurt, Munich, Geneva and Damascus, had disappeared.
When asked by the Americans to hand over the cash looted from Iraq, Syria balked, saying: "Saddam is in your custody. We are transferring to you a copy of the power of attorney he gave to the `Syrian businessman', whom we do not know. If you can show us a more recent power of attorney from Saddam Hussein, we can compare signatures and act on your prisoner's instructions. Without the right documentation, we cannot help you."
Before converting the old currency with Saddam's portrait to new dinar notes, Bremer and US calculated some four trillion dinars ($2.85 billion) would be needed for the conversion.
Their estimate was far too modest. The amount Iraqis rushed to trade in had soared to 6.3 trillion dinars, the equivalent of $4.5 billion, by the January 15 deadline for handing in old notes for new. It then turned out that around 40 percent of the cash in circulation in Iraq was in the hands of pro-Saddam elements, specifically N-14 operatives.
US and Iraqi economic planners had taken it for granted that the excess funds had come from dinars ordinary Iraqis had squirreled away. They were wrong. The money had been hoarded in foreign cash - euros, yens and Australian dollars for preference. It surfaced as post-war Iraqis went on spending sprees and began buying American and Japanese cars. Since early May, the keys of more than a million new vehicles, worth more than $5 billion, have been handed to eager customers in the main cities of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, Najaf and Karbala. Purchases are mostly made in foreign notes - no bank transactions.
Over the past two months, the dinar has strengthened sharply, gaining more than
30 percent against the dollar as the exchange rate has gone from more than 2,000 to around 1,400.
A senior Iraqi banking official explained the newfound affluence up and down Iraq to DEBKA-Net-Weekly: "The provisional government is committed for the time being to feeding 25 million Iraqis gratis. Saddam's system of food stamps and virtually free water and fuel goes on uninterrupted by the war. The only thing that has changed is the standard of services and the diversity of consumer products available. This situation clearly cannot go on much longer if the economy is to be rebuilt on a healthy footing."
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, Bremer's team has concluded that a stable economy and realistic Iraqi exchange rate will remain elusive as long as Saddam's agents maintain their iron grip on the cash in circulation and the captured dictator continues to control vast investment capital overseas. At the same time, ordinary Iraqis continued to hoard black market foreign currency.
Even if a sovereign government is installed in Baghdad without hitch and a general election goes smoothly, the new regime will have little control over the economy.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources have obtained more information expanding on Saddam Hussein's private currency printing enterprise.
It now appears that rather than running a private mint, Saddam, his sons and the commander of the 14th Directorate enjoyed free access to a sealed annex of the national mint and creamed off supplies for the slush funds of the presidential bureau and secret service chiefs. These sums were never officially recorded or counted in determining Iraq's gross domestic product. No one but Saddam knows exactly how much was run off in the sealed annex or its destinations. The result was the creation of two Iraqi economies - one official, the other black. Most is believed to have been invested overseas and an estimated 15 percent to 20 percent of the profits returning to Iraq to defray the costs of running a guerrilla war against the US-led coalition. The fighting groups loyal to the deposed dictator appear to command an almost unlimited war chest.
However, five key people are suspected by US investigators of holding short cuts to this information, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources - three in Syria and two in Lebanon. The members of this tight group handled money transfers on behalf of the fugitive Iraqi regime leaders and are the only people who know the identities of the 14th Directorate operatives overseeing Saddam's financial empire.
The flurry around Saddam's deposits in Syria and the discovery of the power of attorney in the hands of a "Syrian businessman" have prompted Saddam's eldest daughter Raghed Kamal to change her plans. On January 16, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 141 reported her request to relocate from Amman to Paris and re-establish the Iraqi Baath party. Now Saddam's daughter has applied for permission to move to Damascus instead of the French capital.

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Copyright 2000-2004 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

>> MORE TAHIR DETAILS...


Malaysian Inquiry Reveals Nuclear Path
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -
A Malaysian inquiry revealed that the father of Pakistan's nuclear program sold uranium enrichment equipment to Iran for $3 million and signed lucrative contracts for Libya, part of a thriving black market in nuclear arms, according to a police report released Friday.
The report - based on interviews with one of the operation's purported middlemen, Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir - reveals details about alleged deals between Pakistan, Iran and Libya. It lays out the extent of the black market, which appears to have included a company owned by the son of Malaysia's prime minister, as well as British and Swiss middlemen.
Tahir, a 44-year-old Sri Lankan, says he was one of several people who helped Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, sell nuclear technology to willing bidders. Khan confessed this month to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Malaysia's investigation into Tahir began after a company controlled by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son was said to have unwittingly supplied the network.
Police said the 12-page report on the three-month investigation will be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nonproliferation watchdog. The Malaysians urged the agency to investigate European individuals and firms.
President Bush singled out Tahir and Malaysia in a speech last week that urged tougher international regulations.
Among details supplied by Tahir and laid out in the report are deals between Khan's operatives to sell nuclear equipment to Iran for $3 million in cash and to supply a uranium compound used in the enrichment process to Libya.
According to Tahir's account, Libya approached Khan in 1997 for help building a uranium enrichment program. Negotiations began in Istanbul, Turkey, between the Pakistani scientist and a Libyan identified as Mohamad Matuq Mohamad.
Around 2001, Khan told Tahir that "a certain amount" of enriched uranium was flown from Pakistan to Libya, the report said. Subsequently, centrifuge units arrived in Libya from Pakistan.
What Khan's network couldn't get for Libya directly, it helped the country build, sending machines and technicians to set up centrifuge-making operations and calling it "Project Machine Shop 1001," according to Tahir's account.
Centrifuges are sophisticated machines that can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons or nuclear power.
Late last year, Libya acknowledged trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and pledged to scrap them. Unlike Libya, Iran denies ever having had such ambitions.
Tahir told police he was recruited to Khan's network in 1994. That year, on Khan's instructions, Tahir arranged for two containers of used centrifuge units from Pakistan to be sent to Iran aboard an Iranian-owned merchant ship, the report says.
An unidentified Iranian paid for the units with about $3 million worth of dirhams, the United Arab Emirates currency.
"The cash was brought in two briefcases and kept in an apartment that was used as a guesthouse by the Pakistani nuclear arms expert each time he visited Dubai," the report said.
One operative named as working for Khan is Peter Griffin, a Briton whom Tahir alleged designed the Libyan workshop and sent eight Libyan technicians to Spain to learn how to use lathes for centrifuge parts.
According to the report, two others were Freidrich Tinner, a Swiss engineer whom Khan met in the 1980s, and his son, Urs Tinner, 39, who allegedly worked with Tahir in getting Malaysian company Scomi Precision Engineering, or SCOPE, to produce centrifuge parts.
SCOPE engineered more than 25,000 individual parts for a Dubai-based company owned by Griffin, Gulf Technical Industries, under a contract negotiated by Tahir, and shipped them between December 2002 and August 2003.
Swiss authorities have launched an investigation into Urs Tinner's alleged role, officials there said Friday. The Tinner family sent The Associated Press a statement saying Urs Tinner worked for SCOPE in Kuala Lumpur as a technical consultant for the last three years.
It said he controlled the manufacture of machinery parts, but that "information about the customer or the purpose of the goods was unavailable to him during the whole period."
The parts, in boxes marked with SCOPE's name, were seized in the Mediterranean last October en route from Dubai to Libya.
The family statement said Urs Tinner stopped working for SCOPE last October because he had not been paid his consultancy fees for several months.
"Other family members were not involved in this process at any time," the statement said.
SCOPE is a subsidiary of Scomi Group, an oil-and-gas firm whose biggest stakeholder is Kaspadu, an investment company owned by the Malaysian prime minister's son, Kamaluddin Abdullah.
Tahir joined Kaspadu as a director in December 2000, about the same time that Scomi established SCOPE and built its factory to make the parts ordered by Gulf Technical Industries, according to public documents. Tahir left the board in early 2003.
Scomi and its staff thought the parts were to be used in the oil and gas industry in Dubai, the report said. Only Tahir and Tinner, whom he brought in to oversee the work, knew the true purpose and ultimate destination.
A Malaysian official, speaking to AP on condition of anonymity Friday, said there are no immediate plans to detain Tahir because investigators had found no "compelling evidence" that he broke Malaysian or other laws.
But Tahir is under close surveillance, the official said.

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>> DETAILS ON THE OTHER KHAN...

Pakistani Admits Ties to Nuclear Suspect
By PAUL HAVEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - A Pakistani man named in U.S. court documents as part of a nuclear proliferation scheme acknowledged he had business dealings with a main suspect in the case, but said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press that he did nothing wrong.
The man, Humayun Khan, was named in a U.S. federal court case against Asher Karni, an Israeli who was arrested in Denver on New Year's Day. U.S. authorities accuse Karni of using front companies and falsified documents to buy nuclear bomb triggers in the United States for shipment to Pakistan.
Khan acknowledged that his company was a supplier of high-tech devices for the Pakistani military, but said he imported military products only for use in armed forces repair shops. He said he also supplied civilian companies and Pakistan's Education Ministry.
Khan said it was unthinkable that he would have openly used the name of his family company, Pakland PME Corp., if he were involved in an illicit arms deal.
"There is a saying we have that robbers and thieves wear masks," Khan told AP in an interview at his office in a dilapidated building in the Pakistani capital. "Would I openly go and ask this man for something that I wanted to put in a nuclear system and use my own name? It is absurd."
The father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, acknowledged this month that he headed a clandestine group that supplied Pakistani nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Washington has accepted a decision by President Pervez Musharraf to pardon the scientist, but it is pressing Islamabad to clamp down on the weapons network
Humayun Khan showed an AP reporter documents that appeared to indicate he paid Karni's South Africa-based company, Top-Cape Technology, $4,580 in July 2002 for a specialized power supply box, but he said the device was for civilian use.
Khan said another deal to buy a magnetometer from Karni for use in an airport project in July 2003 fell through when he realized Karni had a dubious reputation and was an Israeli.
Pakistan and Israel have no diplomatic ties, and Pakistanis are banned from doing business with Israeli businesses. Khan said Karni had told him that he was a Palestinian.
Khan's claim to have cut off contact with Karni last summer seem undermined by e-mails from his account to Karni filed in court that date from August, September and October 2003.
Among the documents filed in court is a copy of an invoice for Karni's commission from Pakland PME for the originally attempted purchase of 200 devices called triggered spark gaps. The devices can be used in machines to break up kidney stones, but exports are restricted because they also are key to triggering nuclear detonations.
When Karni e-mailed Khan last summer that he couldn't get the spark gaps, Khan messaged back: "I know it is difficult but thats (sic) why we came to know each other, please help to re-negotiate this from any other source."
E-mails from Khan seeking infrared sensors for Sidewinder missiles refer to the part number from Lockheed Martin Naval Systems (619-A) and to the missile itself by its U.S. military designation, AIM-9L.
"Customer is anxious, please advise!" Khan wrote to Karni last summer about the infrared detectors. In an e-mail dated May 29, Khan wrote, "We urgently require the following detector," then listed the part number.
In the AP interview Friday, Khan denied he had ever requested the infrared sensors or a sophisticated oscilloscope, a measuring device that could be used in nuclear weapons programs.
Khan indicated it was possible, however, that a former employee may have used his name and e-mail address to contact Karni while he was out of the office because of his wife's illness. The man, Mohammed Ali Rafi, has fled to Dubai, Khan said.
"We're trying to track him down," he added.
The U.S. court documents indicate Karni had asked an oscilloscope manufacturer, Oregon-based Tektronix Inc., if he could buy one of the devices for shipment to Pakistan, but the company told him to seek a U.S. export license.
Khan said his company is a representative in Pakistan for Tektronix, and rejected any notion that he would have had Karni contact the company.
Khan said he could not prove his innocence because a computer virus destroyed all his company's records earlier this month.
"The timing is very unfortunate, I know," he said, adding later:
"When they find documents in Pakistan that prove that I was the one who did this, then they can come and take me away."
---
Associated Press reporter Matt Kelley in Washington contributed to this report.

IRAN: THE DEATH OF ILLUSION
By AMIR TAHERI
February 20, 2004 -- 'WE must turn a page and move on." So Ali Khamenei, the "Supreme Guide" of the Islamic Republic in Iran, advised his compatriots earlier this week. He was referring to the parliamentary elections held today and prearranged to ensure almost total victory for his own faction within the regime.
Even a month ago, not many would have predicted such an easy victory for the faction of which Khamenei is the figurehead. The rival faction, whose standard-bearer is supposed to be President Mohammad Khatami, was expected to put up a real fight. It did not, because, lacking a popular support base, it didn't have the stomach for a real fight.
The Iranian election experience puts an end to several illusions.
Illusion No. 1: That the mere holding of elections is a sign of democratization. Now we know that, although there can be no democracy without elections, it is possible to have elections without democracy.
The Khomeinist electoral recipe is simple and efficient.
It starts by making sure that all the candidates are handpicked for their total loyalty to the leader. Next, it makes sure that there is no real election campaign. The candidates are not allowed to criticize the leadership. Nor can they offer programs that differ with the essential options of the leadership.
The whole campaign lasts only one week, and no one is allowed to spend more than $10,000 on a campaign. Candidates are denied access to the heavy mass media such as radio and TV, and any material they put out must meet the authorities' approval.
Finally, winning a majority of votes is not enough. A victory must still be confirmed by no fewer than 11 different layers of authority, topped by the Council of the Guardians of the Revolution, which can nullify any or all of the results.
The purpose of such a system of elections is not to challenge the government of the day and to offer alternative policy choices. It is to pay allegiance to the rulers.
Illusion No. 2: That this regime can be reformed from within.
No system can be reformed unless it opens itself to new, especially rival, forces. And that means sharing power with groups and parties that, for one reason or another, have been excluded from decision-making.
Reform does not consist solely of new ways of doing things. It also requires that different people do at least some of those new things. We saw that fact illustrated in the Soviet Union of the late 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to change things while maintaining his Communist Party's monopoly on power.
Illusion No. 3: That Iran has a united domestic opposition force that has a coherent analysis of the nation's situation and a clear vision of its future.
Now we know that the so-called "reformist" camp did not exist except in the imagination of some Western commentators. This election has broken that "camp" into no fewer than 18 different groups, some of which have boycotted the elections while others, although denied the right to field candidates of their own, opposed the boycott in the name of revolutionary solidarity.
The "reformist" camp (which presented absolutely no major reform program in any field) consisted of a crowd as random as that of people at a bus stop who have nothing in common except a desire to get on the next bus.
A credible opposition cannot be made of occasional student riots, farcical sit-ins in the parliament, speeches about Schopenhauer and Hegel and Colgate smiles of the kind President Khatami excels in. Before anything else, it needs to show why the present system is bad and how and with what it should be replaced.
In the past decade or so, Iranian opposition has generated much heat but little light. It has shown a great deal of passion but little thought. Romantic preoccupation with vague generalities has been its wont, while the Khomeinist establishment has focused on the concrete issues of power and its practice.
In other words, the Iranian system is blocked not only because the establishment does not wish to share power (what establishment would?), but also because there is no credible opposition force on the scene.
It is not enough for a majority of the people to be unhappy with a regime for that regime to consent to change and reform. There can be no democratization without an opposition capable of offering clear alternatives to a government's analyses and policies.
WITH the death of these illusions, the Iranians, and others interested in Iran, must review some of their recent assumptions.
The key lesson to Iranians is that the alternative to this regime cannot emerge from within it. It is possible, and to some extent even happening now, that large segments of the establishment drift away from it. But, unless they are absorbed into an opposition, they will amount to nothing but flotsam and jetsam of a turbulent political life.
As the Prophet said: There is always something good in what happens. The Iranian election farce is no exception.
It shows that the present regime's legitimacy does not come from the ballot box but from its ability to impose its will by force if necessary. It obliges Iran's neighbors, and the major powers interested in the region, to abandon their illusions and to either accept the present regime on its own terms or designate it as a foe that must ultimately be brought down.
The death of illusions in Iran also means the death of the European policy of "constructive dialogue," first proposed by the Germans in the 1980s and now most actively pursued by the British. That policy was based on the assumption that the regime could reform itself, peacefully and speedily. It is now clear that it cannot.
Thus the Europeans face a stark choice:
* They can decide to hold their noses and continue dealing with the Iranian regime because they need its cooperation on a number of issues, notably nuclear nonproliferation, Iraq and Afghanistan.
* Or they can orchestrate a set of new diplomatic, economic and even military pressures on the regime as a means of encouraging the emergence of a genuinely democratic internal opposition.
For its part, the Bush administration needs to develop a coherent analysis of the Iranian situation. It must decide whether or not Iran is, in the words of the State Department's No. 2, Richard Armitage, a "sort of democracy," or a despotic regime using religion and violence to remain in power.
Short-term realpolitik may counsel an accommodation with the present regime in Tehran, much as it has determined Washington's China policy. But that would mean the premature death of President Bush's ambitious plan for "a new Middle East." It would also give the Islamic Republic time to assemble an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction, which the Tehran leadership regards as its best insurance policy.
Today a page is, indeed, turned in Iran's recent history. But it may not have been the same page that Khamenei had hoped for.

E-mail: amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com
NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc.
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'I would live in America, no problem'
(Filed: 20/02/2004)
David Blair talks to young Republican Guards in Teheran who defy the official view of the US
The old American embassy in Teheran might have been seared into the world's consciousness as the cradle of Iran's revolution, yet the talk among the young Revolutionary Guards stationed there does not match the murals shouting defiance from battered walls.
"I would live in America, no problem," said one 22-year-old, who added that he associated the country with "love and freedom".
Nearby, "Down with USA" was painted on the wall in garish red and yellow hues.
Another guard, also in his 20s, added: "Our government has one view of America but the people have another.
"Our government tries to show the US as an enemy of our country and of our people. All of the young believe the US is good. Most of the people believe this."
The opinions are in tune with a new generation. More than half of all Iranians were not born when a crowd of thousands, led by the nascent Revolutionary Guards, scaled the embassy walls in November 1979 and stormed the imposing, red-brick building.
Seven months after Ayatollah Khomeini had proclaimed the Islamic Republic, Iranians took revenge on America for having supported the ousted Shah. They occupied the embassy for more than a year and 66 diplomats were taken hostage. The diplomats stayed in captivity until Jimmy Carter's presidency ended in January 1981.
Iran's revolutionary regime sought to milk the coup for all it was worth. The old embassy was turned into a temple of anti-Americanism.
The building houses a museum dedicated to Washington's supposed crimes. A miniature Statue of Liberty planted on the embassy's lawn wears the grotesque face of a skull and bare ribs protrude from her shrunken chest. The bald eagle crest that once adorned the gates has disappeared, defaced by countless hammers and chisels.
But today the museum is virtually defunct. It opens only on selected anniversaries, chiefly for the benefit of foreign visitors.
Some of those who scaled the embassy walls in 1979 are now among the reformist politicians who have been disqualified from contesting today's parliamentary election. About 2,500 candidates have been barred from standing, including 80 sitting MPs.
An official survey suggests that turnout in the election will be about 30 per cent. This compares with the 67 per cent in the last one, in 2000, when reformers won 190 of parliament's 290 seats.
A low turnout would almost certainly allow opponents of reform to retake control of parliament.
Millions of Iranians are grappling with this dilemma. A text message circulating on mobile phones yesterday read: "The ballot boxes are the coffins of freedom. We will not take part in the funeral of freedom."

? Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004
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Source Gives Details of Iran Nukes Deal
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
Associated Press Writer
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP)--Rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold nuclear weapons-making equipment to Iran for $3 million and had enriched uranium shipped to Libya for its atomic program, police said Friday, citing the alleged financier of an international trafficking network.
In the first insider's account of the black-market nuclear program, Buhary Syed Abu Tahir told Malaysian police that Khan asked him to send two containers of used centrifuge parts from Pakistan to Iran in 1994 or 1995.
Tahir also said Libya received enriched uranium from Pakistan in 2001, police said.
President Bush has called Tahir the ``chief financial officer and money launderer'' of the network run by Khan, who gave the Islamic world its first atomic bomb.
Tahir is in Malaysia and has been questioned by authorities about his connections to Khan in this Southeast Asian country.
A report released by police Friday provides a detailed account of the network headed by Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, who confessed earlier this month to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Police said the 12-page report on Tahir's Malaysian connections will be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna, Austria-based U.N. organization that oversees the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Malaysian authorities say they will cooperate if the IAEA seeks further action.
Tahir told Malaysian authorities he organized the shipment of two containers of centrifuge parts from Dubai to Iran aboard an Iranian merchant ship, the report says. Centrifuges are machines that can enrich uranium for weapons and other purposes.
``Payment for the two containers of centrifuge units, amounting to about $3 million,'' was paid by an unnamed Iranian, the report said.
``The cash was brought in two briefcases and kept in an apartment that was used as a guesthouse by the Pakistani nuclear arms expert each time he visited Dubai,'' the report says, identifying Khan as the arms expert.
Tahir said Khan told him ``a certain amount'' of enriched uranium was flown to Libya from Pakistan on a Pakistani airliner in 2001, and a ``certain number'' of centrifuges were flown to Libya direct from Pakistan in 2001-02, the report said.
Malaysian officials said earlier that Tahir broke no Malaysian laws, but they would keep him under surveillance.
Tahir, 44, is married to a Malaysian and has permanent residency status here.
Tahir vacated his apartment in one of Kuala Lumpur's most exclusive suburbs Wednesday after an Associated Press reporter sought him out for comment on allegations he was a key deputy in the smuggling network.
He is a former business associate of Kamaluddin Abdullah, the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who promised the police investigation would be conducted ``without fear or favor.''
A Malaysian company controlled by Kamaluddin, Scomi Precision Engineering, has acknowledged making 14 ``semifinished components'' _ which may amount to thousands of parts--for a Dubai-based company, Gulf Technical Industries, under a contract negotiated by Tahir. They were seized in October while being shipped from Dubai to Libya.
Authorities say the parts were for centrifuges, but Scomi says it did not know what the parts were for.
The release of the police report comes as the international investigation into Tahir widened to Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh intelligence agency, the National Security Committee, is investigating allegations that an affiliate of a company linked to Tahir, SMB Computers, was dealing with highly enriched uranium, spokesman Kenzhebulat Beknazarov said.
SMB is a Dubai-based company established by Tahir and his brother that Bush alleged Tahir used as a front to organize the clandestine movement of parts for centrifuges.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar complained Friday that his nation has been unfairly singled out by Bush in calling for a crackdown on the international nuclear black market.
``Malaysia should not be dragged into the debate of being a country that is involved in the supply of components or otherwise for weapons of mass destruction,'' Sayed Hamid said. ``We have no capability.''
He said most nuclear weapons came from Europe and the United States, ``but nothing has been talked about these people.''

AP-NY-02-20-04 0905EST

Copyright 2004, The Associated Press.
-----------------------------------------

>> TAHIR DOSSIER...
Multinational network aided Pakistan's nuclear help to Libya, report says
Ray Bonner NYT
ISTANBUL Black-market shipments to Libya of nuclear components, including enriched uranium, began with a meeting in Istanbul in 1997 between Libyan officials and the Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, according to the principal middlemen in the operation.
One Turkish company supplied aluminum casting and another contributed electrical cabinets and voltage regulators, the middleman, B.S.A. Tahir, has told the Malaysian police.
But the network included companies and citizens of Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Britain, as well as Dubai and Malaysia, according to a report by Malaysian investigators that was released on Friday in Kuala Lumpur.
"Some of the suppliers were believed to be aware that these components could be used for uranium enrichment centrifuges," the report says, and others were not.
The report was based on police interrogation of Tahir, 44, a businessman who was a key middleman in the network and who has been under close police scrutiny custody in Malaysia since American authorities alerted the Malaysian police last November to the network to supply Libya.
It wasn't just Libya. On one occasion, Tahir, acting for Khan, arranged for the shipment of two containers of centrifuge units from Pakistan to Iran, on a merchant ship owned by an Iranian company, according to the report. The equipment, which cost about $3 million, was paid for in cash taken in two suitcases to Dubai and kept in an apartment was has used as a guesthouse by Khan when he visited there, the Malaysian report says.
The 12-page report does not mention Khan by name but refers to him as the "Pakistani nuclear arms expert" and "akistani scientist."
After saying that Mr. Tahir visited Pakistan, obtained contracts to sell to "Khan Research Laboratory," which was when he met "the Pakistani nuclear expert," the next two lines of the Malaysian report were blacked out. Two lines are blacked out after the report's statement that visited tained contracts to sell to "Khan Research Laboratory," which was when he met "the Pakistani nuclear expert," the next two lines of the Malaysian report were blacked out.
After the 1997 meeting with Libyan officials in Istanbul, there were meetings in Casablance and Dubai, the report says.
In 2001, "a certain amount of UF 6 [enriched uranium] was sent by air from Pakistan to Libya," the report says. It was shipped on a Pakstiani airliner, but Mr. Tahir could not remember the name,according to the report.
In addition to supplying equipment to Libya, a major undertaking was "Project Machine Shop 1001." This was for the purpose of manufacturing centrifuge components in that could not be obtained outside Libya.
Machines for the workshop came from companies in Spain and Italy, the report says.
This project was supervised by Peter Griffin, Mr. Tahir told the Malaysian police. A British engineer, Mr. Griffin first began working with Mr. Khan in the early 1980s, according to British intelligence, which Mr. Griffin confirmed in a recent telephone interview.
He provided the plan for Machine Shop 1001 and a lathe, the report says. He also arranged for 7 or 8 Libyan technicians to go to the company in Spain, according to the report.
In a separate interview, a Western investigator said that the Spanish company had supplied sophisticated tools that were needed for the repair and maintenance of nuclear centrifuges.
In Dubai, Mr. Griffin set up a company called Gulf Technical Industries, which was partially owned by his son, Paul.
Neither of the Griffinscould be reached for comment Friday but in recent weeks, Paul Griffin has denied that he or his father had ever done anything illegal.
Sometime in 2001, Mr. Tahir, acting on behalf of Gulf Technical Industries, signed a contract with a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering, to supply centrifuge components.
Scomi officials have said that they did not know the parts were intended for Libya, but thought they were going to be used by an oil and gas company.
To oversee the production at Scomi, Mr. Tahir sent Urs Tinner, a 39-year old Swiss engineer, the Malaysian report says.
Mr. Tinner's father, a mechanical engineer, had dealings with Mr. Khan going back to the early 1980s, according to the report. He owns a Swiss company, PhiTec, which the Malaysian report spells "Cetec."
Mr. Tinner bought machines and services from his father, and brother, Marco, who owns another company, Traco, according to the report.
While working at Scomi, Urs Tinner took measures to protect the blueprints and hide any evidence of his presence, the report says.
Scomi finished making the centrifuge parts in late 2003, and after that Urs Tinner left, the company has said. When he left, he took the hard drive with him that had the drawings, as well as his personnel file, the Malaysian report says. "This gave the impression that Urs Tinner did not wish to leave any trace of his presence there," the Malaysian police concluded.
The Scomi components were on board the BBC China, when it was seized last Oct. That led to the unraveling of the Khan network.
The New York Times

Copyright ? 2003 The International Herald Tribune
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L'inqui?tant Dr Khan
LE MONDE | 20.02.04 | 14h01 * MIS A JOUR LE 20.02.04 | 16h57
Le p?re de la "bombe islamique" a reconnu sa responsabilit? dans la fuite de technologie nucl?aire. Pr?sent? comme un flambeur m?galomane, il conserve pourtant, au Pakistan, une aura de h?ros national.
Au pied des marches du mausol?e du sultan Mohammad Ghauri, fondateur de l'Empire musulman de Delhi, une r?plique (grandeur nature) du missile qui porte son nom est encadr?e de deux grands portraits peints : ? droite, le sultan, ? gauche, "le h?ros du Pakistan, le Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan". Comme l'indique une plaque, le mausol?e du Sultan, un des h?ros de la conqu?te musulmane de l'Inde, a ?t? "construit par le Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Hilal-i-Imtiaz -une d?coration pakistanaise-, en 1994-1995".

P?re de la "bombe nucl?aire islamique", directeur du programme de missiles Ghauri, le Dr Khan n'a jamais dout? de son importance, mais son association avec ce sultan v?n?r? est sans doute aussi une fa?on de r?gler ses comptes avec une Inde qu'il a d?finitivement reni?e en 1952. Depuis qu'il a accept? d'assumer seul, le 4 f?vrier, la responsabilit? des fuites de technologie nucl?aire au profit de l'Iran, de la Cor?e du Nord et de la Libye, pendant une quinzaine d'ann?es, Abdul Qadeer Khan a ?t? relev? de toutes ses fonctions et quasiment assign? ? r?sidence dans sa maison de fonction d'Islamabad.

N? le 27 avril 1936 ? Bhopal, aujourd'hui capitale de l'Etat indien du Madhya Pradesh, Abdul Qadeer Khan quitte sa terre natale ? l'?ge 16 ans, apr?s avoir v?cu de pr?s, ? en croire son biographe officiel, les affres de la sanglante partition du sous-continent en 1947. Bhopal a une large population musulmane et re?oit beaucoup de r?fugi?s cherchant ? ?chapper aux massacres g?n?ralis?s. "Je n'ai jamais oubli? comment, alors que je gagnais le Pakistan, un garde-fronti?re indien a arrach? de ma poche le stylo que m'avait donn? mon fr?re pour me r?compenser de mon succ?s aux examens", affirmera-t-il, plus de quarante ans apr?s les faits, sur yespakistan.com, un site de Pakistanais ?migr?s. Il conserve chez lui une grande peinture murale de ce qui se veut le dernier train ? avoir travers? la fronti?re, laissant derri?re lui un cort?ge sanglant.

C'est quatre mois apr?s la premi?re explosion nucl?aire indienne, en mai 1974, qu'il ?crit au premier ministre pakistanais Zulficar Ali Bhutto pour lui offrir ses services. Ce dernier n'a jamais cach? sa volont? de faire jeu ?gal avec l'Inde, et sa comparaison est rest?e c?l?bre : "Si l'Inde construit la bombe, nous mangerons de l'herbe ou des feuilles, nous aurons m?me faim, mais nous en aurons une. Nous n'avons pas d'alternative, bombe atomique contre bombe atomique."

En janvier 1972, quelques mois apr?s son ascension au pouvoir, M. Bhutto convoque, ? Multan, une conf?rence des scientifiques pakistanais avec pour agenda : construire la bombe. Il promet de leur fournir toutes les facilit?s et l'argent n?cessaires pour obtenir ce qu'il appelle d?j? "la bombe islamique". En plein boom p?trolier, les Etats arabes comme l'Arabie saoudite ou la Libye n'h?sitent pas ? mettre la main au porte-monnaie. Dans un discours flamboyant, bien ? son image, le bouillant colonel Mouammar Kadhafi affirme, enthousiaste, ? l'issue du sommet islamique de Lahore, en 1974 : "Nos ressources sont les v?tres."

Abdul Qadeer Khan observe les choses depuis les Pays-Bas. Il a fait du chemin depuis son arriv?e ? Karachi et sa licence de sciences ? l'universit? de la m?me ville. Apr?s avoir appris l'allemand dans le but de poursuivre des ?tudes ? l'?tranger, il est parti ? Berlin, puis a pass? une ma?trise d'ing?nierie ? l'universit? de technologie de Delft, en Hollande, et un doctorat d'ing?nierie en m?tallurgie physique ? l'universit? de Louvain, en Belgique. Il travaille, depuis 1972, avec le consortium anglo-germano-hollandais Urenco, qui g?re une usine d'enrichissement d'uranium ? Almelo, en Hollande.

Son offre tombe ? pic. Zulficar Ali Bhutto tient son homme. Il le fait rentrer et n'h?site pas ? lui donner, en juillet 1976, le contr?le total de l'Engineering Research Laboratory (ERL), laboratoire qui travaille sous la supervision de l'Agence pakistanaise de l'?nergie atomique (PAEC). Mais Abdul Qadeer Khan ne l'entend pas ainsi. Il veut son ind?pendance et n'h?site pas ? d?nigrer par ?crit ses coll?gues, qu'il fait ?carter pour avoir sa propre ?quipe. L'homme d?borde d'ambition, sait ce qu'il veut et comment y arriver. "Il a apport? avec lui une centrifugeuse d?saffect?e, des plans, les noms de compagnies qui fournissent le mat?riel ? Urenco, de la technologie", raconte Shahid-ur Rahman, auteur d'un livre sur le programme nucl?aire pakistanais.

Jusqu'? aujourd'hui, le scientifique refuse de reconna?tre ses "emprunts" ? Urenco, pour lesquels il a ?t? condamn? par contumace aux Pays-Bas, en 1983, ? quatre ann?es de prison, avant que le jugement soit annul? en appel deux ans plus tard pour vice de forme. "Tout juste reconna?t-il avoir apport? quelques composants", affirme M. Rahman. Cette exp?rience lui laisse un go?t amer et il accusera souvent l'Occident de vouloir monopoliser ? son seul profit la technologie nucl?aire. "Ses transferts ? l'Iran, ? la Cor?e du Nord, ? la Libye s'inscrivent sans doute aussi dans sa volont? et son orgueil de prouver ? l'Occident qu'il pouvait briser son monopole", affirme une de ses connaissances. Nationaliste intransigeant, il n'est pas, pour ses amis, un islamiste militant. "Il est mari? ? une ?trang?re, ses filles ne portent pas le voile, et il ne s'est jamais cach? d'appr?cier ? l'occasion un peu d'alcool", assure l'un d'eux.

En 1976, le Dr Khan veut aller vite et ne s'embarrasse pas de scrupules. "Il d?cide d'acheter tout ce qui est possible sur le march? et de ne fabriquer localement qu'en dernier ressort. Ses ?quipes sillonnent le monde pour faire leurs emplettes ; des compagnies ?crans sont cr??es au Proche-Orient, en Extr?me- Orient", raconte encore M. Rahman, qui ajoute : "Quand les ambassades occidentales arr?tent de d?livrer des visas aux scientifiques pakistanais, les directeurs des compagnies europ?ennes ou am?ricaines sont invit?s en Turquie, ? Duba?, ? Singapour ou ? Hongkong pour discuter de contrats lucratifs."

"J'ai pleinement profit? de la volont? des compagnies occidentales de faire des affaires", affirmera un jour le Dr Khan dans une interview. Personne, alors, ne cherche ? savoir comment il op?re. Il a les coud?es d'autant plus franches que son projet avance. En 1980, le laboratoire du Dr Khan a d?j? mille centrifugeuses. Impatient, il accuse une nouvelle fois ses coll?gues de l'Agence atomique (PAEC) de ne pas lui fournir le gaz n?cessaire ? l'enrichissement de l'uranium. "Tous les jours il se rendait chez le g?n?ral Zia ul-Haq pour d?noncer Munir Ahmad Khan -directeur de la PAEC-", raconte M. Rahman.

Le g?n?ral Zia, qui a renvers? Ali Bhutto, est aussi impatient que lui d'avoir la bombe. En 1981, Zia r?compense Abdul Qadeer Khan pour sa premi?re production d'uranium enrichi en donnant au laboratoire, install? ? Kahuta, ? 40 kilom?tres d'Islamabad, le nom de "Khan Research Laboratory" (KRL), qu'il a conserv?. En 1984, le Dr Khan teste ? froid sa premi?re bombe, quelques mois, semble-t-il, apr?s un test similaire op?r? par la PAEC, ? qui le g?n?ral Zia a aussi donn? l'ordre de d?velopper la bombe.

Le Dr Khan, qui jouit d?j? dans l'establishment pakistanais de la plus haute estime - il est le citoyen le plus d?cor? du pays -, continue son ascension avec la production du missile Ghauri. Alors que la PAEC se rend en Chine pour obtenir le missile M. 11, qui deviendra au Pakistan le "Shaheen", Abdul Qadeer Khan va en Cor?e du Nord, o? il obtient le "Nodong", qui devient le "Ghauri". C'est ? cette occasion qu'il aurait livr? des ?quipements et de la technologie nucl?aire ? Pyongyang. "La priorit? est d'avoir un missile, personne ne regarde ? quel prix", affirme un ex-g?n?ral. Le Ghauri, avec une port?e annonc?e de 1 500 km, est test? le 6 avril 1998. Nouvelle heure gloire pour le Dr Khan, quelque sept semaines avant les tests nucl?aires de mai. Depuis, des r?pliques du Ghauri, grandeur nature, fleurissent ? tous les carrefours des villes Pakistanaises.

C'est qu'Abdul Qadeer Khan sait se vendre et d?pense beaucoup pour construire son image. "Il m'a offert de l'argent, des voyages en Europe, une maison, juste pour me faire ?crire sur lui ce qu'il voulait", raconte un journaliste pakistanais qui a refus? l'offre. Certains n'ont pas eu les m?mes scrupules, et aujourd'hui beaucoup sont interrog?s sur les largesses re?ues. Selon un officiel pakistanais cit? par le quotidien The News, le Dr Khan aurait d?pens?, depuis 1988, environ 1 million d'euros pour financer des ?v?nements m?diatiques destin?s ? promouvoir son image de p?re de la "bombe islamique".

Au lendemain des six explosions nucl?aires de mai 1998 - dont cinq (les meilleures selon un sp?cialiste) provenaient de la PAEC et une seulement de KRL -, le professeur Samar Moubarakmand, de la PAEC, est accueilli comme un h?ros. Le Dr Khan, de son c?t?, d?ploie tous ses contacts m?diatiques pour faire revenir sur lui les feux de la rampe. Lors d'une conf?rence de presse mouvement?e, ses aides multiplient les offres d'anecdotes ? la gloire de leur patron. Le "bon Dr Khan" a aussi financ? sans compter des ?uvres charitables, des instituts ?ducatifs et, bien s?r, ses amis. "Sur une simple lettre d'appel ? l'aide, il m'a offert un local ? Islamabad pour abriter mon organisation", raconte un responsable d'une ONG (organisation non gouvernementale) qui n'a aucun lien avec le Dr Khan.

Ce dernier a sa propre ONG, Sachet (Soci?t? pour l'avancement de la sant?, l'?ducation, la formation des communaut?s), qu'il a financ?e largement, si l'on en juge par la taille de son si?ge ? Islamabad. Sachet ?tait, il est vrai, dirig?e par la deuxi?me femme du Dr Khan, Rakhshinda Perveen, dont il a divorc? en octobre 2003. Celle-ci, qui n'a pas pour l'instant r?apparu ? son domicile et qui serait interdite de sortie du Pakistan, avait pour habitude de se rendre tous les mois ? Duba?, raconte une source proche qui veut garder l'anonymat. "C'est l? qu'ils se rencontraient, car le Dr Khan ne venait jamais chez elle ? Islamabad." Le Dr Khan est mari?, depuis son s?jour aux Pays-Bas, ? Hendrina, une N?erlandaise de passeport britannique (parce que n?e en Zambie), dont il a deux filles, Dina et Aisha. Selon les enqu?teurs pakistanais, le Dr Khan se serait rendu quarante-quatre fois ? Duba? en quatre ans. Lors de son interrogatoire, il aurait reconnu poss?der dans l'?mirat un compte en banque sous l'identit? d'un pr?te-nom.

Connues des autorit?s pakistanaises au moins depuis 2000, ? la suite d'un audit effectu? au laboratoire KRL, les irr?gularit?s financi?res du Dr Khan se montent ? plusieurs millions de dollars. "Depuis vingt-cinq ans, le Dr Khan a mani? entre 5 et 10 milliards de dollars, et personne ne lui a demand? de comptes", affirme un connaisseur du programme nucl?aire. "Chacun sait qu'il payait parfois deux fois le prix des ?quipements dont il avait besoin, mais il affirmait que c'?tait la ran?on pour les obtenir, et personne ne disait rien."

Visiblement le Dr Khan ne faisait pas de diff?rence entre l'argent de KRL et son argent personnel. "Il a toujours agi pour le pouvoir, l'argent, la gloire", dit de lui le professeur A. H. Nayyar, physicien. Le pouvoir, il l'avait ? KRL et bien au-del?, tant il s'?tait rendu indispensable. M?galomane, il circulait depuis tr?s longtemps avec une escorte et un convoi plus impressionnant que celui du chef de l'Etat. Invit? d'honneur de multiples galas de charit? et de s?minaires divers, son arriv?e ne passait jamais inaper?ue et il cultivait sa haute silhouette aux cheveux grisonnants.

L'homme est entier, dans ses amiti?s comme dans ses haines. "Pour ses amis, rien n'?tait trop beau, raconte l'un d'eux, et il pouvait m?me vous donner une maison. Mais, de la m?me fa?on, son hostilit? ? l'?gard de ses ennemis ?tait extr?me, et il n'avait de cesse d'essayer de les d?truire", ajoute-t-il. Cette attitude explique pour une large part la duplication tr?s on?reuse du programme nucl?aire pakistanais entre KRL et la PAEC. G?n?reux, l'homme ne s'est toutefois pas oubli? et a su favoriser ses proches. Son ex-gendre, Noman Shah, est devenu par la gr?ce de son union avec Dina - dont il a rapidement divorc? - un tr?s riche associ? des fructueuses affaires de KRL, ce qui risque de lui valoir quelques ennuis.

Le Dr Khan lui-m?me, sur son seul nom, a obtenu des permis de construire pour des terrains normalement inconstructibles, sur les bords du lac Rawal, o? il s'est fait b?tir une villa qui ne manque pas de charme. Il en poss?derait une demi-douzaine d'autres ? Islamabad, bien qu'il soit difficile de d?nouer l'?cheveau de ce qui appartient ? KRL ou ? son fondateur. Le p?re de la bombe serait aussi associ? ? diverses affaires, comme un h?tel, un restaurant chinois, un bowling ? Islamabad. Selon l'enqu?te officielle, il a aussi un h?tel ? Tombouctou, au Mali, qui porte le nom de sa femme, le Hendrina Khan Hotel.

Derri?re les fen?tres de sa maison de fonction, sur les bords des collines de Margalla, ? Islamabad, l'homme m?dite sans doute sur l'ingratitude humaine. "Il souffre, confie une de ses connaissances, d'?tre enferm? comme un paria", lui qui reste, pour l'immense majorit? des Pakistanais - dont le pr?sident Pervez Moucharraf -, un h?ros national. Un h?ros national avec des secrets nationaux qui le prot?gent tout autant qu'ils le menacent.

Fran?oise Chipaux

* ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 21.02.04
-----------------------------------------------
L'Iran cacherait l'ampleur de son programme nucl?aire
LE MONDE | 20.02.04 | 16h51
T?h?ran n'a pas notifi? l'acquisition des plans d'une centrifugeuse du type Pak-2 pour l'enrichissement de l'uranium. Washington reproche ? l'Agence internationale de l'?nergie atomique (AIEA) d'exercer un contr?le trop indulgent.
Vienne de notre correspondante

Le programme nucl?aire iranien est plus que jamais ? l'ordre du jour, deux semaines avant une r?union du Conseil des gouverneurs de l'Agence internationale pour l'?nergie atomique (AIEA), les 8 et 9 mars, qui devra appr?cier la "transparence" dont fait preuve le r?gime islamique de T?h?ran. Aux yeux des chancelleries occidentales, et surtout de Washington, l'Iran reste suspect de vouloir se doter de l'arme nucl?aire. M?me s'il n'est pas exact, selon les informations recueillies par Le Monde, que les experts onusiens auraient trouver les preuves mat?rielles de telles activit?s dans une base militaire iranienne.

Alors que la Libye - o? le directeur g?n?ral de l'AIEA Mohamed ElBaradei se rendra, lundi 23 f?vrier, pour la deuxi?me fois en deux mois - est cit?e en exemple pour sa coop?ration sans r?serve, les diplomates de l'Agence estiment que T?h?ran a fait "peu de progr?s" malgr? des d?buts prometteurs. Fin octobre, sous la pression conjugu?e de l'Union europ?enne et des Etats-Unis, l'Iran a remis une d?claration d?taill?e de son programme, que l'AIEA esp?rait "compl?te et d?finitive". Le 18 d?cembre, il a sign? en outre le protocole additionnel au Trait? de non-prolif?ration nucl?aire (TNP) qui autorise l'Agence a men? des inspections surprises dans tous les endroits o? elle le demande.

Mais ces derniers jours, confront?es ? des documents d?couverts par les experts onusiens, les autorit?s iraniennes ont d? avouer une omission de taille : elles avaient acquis les plans d'une centrifugeuse de type Pak-2 (un mod?le d'origine pakistanaise, calqu? sur un prototype occidental), qui permet d'obtenir plus facilement un uranium de qualit? militaire. Cet aspect inqui?tant du programme iranien sera ?voqu? dans le rapport que M. ElBaradei va remettre, ces jours-ci, aux 35 gouverneurs de l'AIEA. Fabriqu?e avec des aciers sp?ciaux extr?mement r?sistants, la Pak-2 est presque deux fois plus puissante que la Pak-1, avec laquelle l'Iran avait reconnu mener des activit?s d'enrichissement d'uranium. Dans son ?dition du 19 f?vrier, le quotidien USA Today va plus loin, en affirmant que les inspecteurs de l'ONU ont trouv? des composants d'une "machine sophistiqu?e pour enrichir l'uranium", dans la base militaire a?rienne de Doshen-Tappen, au sud-est de T?h?ran. Pareille d?couverte, a soulign?, jeudi, le porte-parole de la Maison Blanche pourrait ?tayer "notre conviction que l'Iran poursuit un programme nucl?aire militaire sous couvert d'un effort civil".

Officiellement, l'Agence s'est refus?e ? tout commentaire sur les r?v?lations de USA Today. En coulisses, on se dit surpris de cette r?f?rence ? une base militaire o? les experts onusiens n'ont "jamais mis les pieds". Exploit? par Washington, l'article du quotidien am?ricain n'apporterait en fait "aucune v?rit? nouvelle".

Du c?t? iranien, on nie farouchement : T?h?ran "n'a pas eu, et n'a pas, d'activit?s nucl?aires ? caract?re militaire". A en croire le ministre des affaires ?trang?res, Kamal Kharrazi, les plans de Pak-2 n'ont jamais servi qu'? un programme de recherche, l'Iran exp?rimentant "tous les nouveaux mod?les dans l'industrie". T?h?ran n'avait pas inclu cet ?l?ment dans sa d?claration, en octobre, "parce que nous n'?tions pas oblig?s de le faire" avant d'avoir sign? le protocole additionnel insiste un diplomate iranien, interrog? par Le Monde. "Nous n'avons jamais import? des pi?ces d?tach?es -de Pak-2-. Il s'agissait d'un plan, un simple dessin, que nous avons achet?, il y a plus de dix ans, et qui prenait la poussi?re au fond d'un tiroir". Des exp?riences ont bien ?t? tent?es "pendant quelques mois, il y a plusieurs ann?es" par un scientifique frais ?moulu de l'universit? mais elles ont rapidement "avort?" et non jamais ?t? reprises.

"POSITION DE FAIBLESSE"

Dans une premi?re version, les responsables iraniens ont essay? de d?montrer qu'ils avaient bel et bien inform? l'Agence sur le fait qu'ils poss?daient les plans d'une centrifugeuse plus perfectionn?e que ce que les limiers du nucl?aire avaient vu jusqu'alors sur les sites iraniens. Toujours selon ce diplomate de T?h?ran, les Etats-Unis montent en ?pingle "une affaire inexistante" dans l'espoir d'obtenir un rapport plus "muscl?" de M. ElBaradei, de la m?me mani?re qu'ils avaient essay?, ? l'automne dernier, d'arracher ? leurs alli?s europ?ens une condamnation de l'Iran, et son renvoi devant le Conseil de s?curit?, "pour nous conduire en position de faiblesse ? la table des n?gociations". De leur c?t? les Etats-Unis ne font pas myst?re de leur d?sapprobation, lorsque, s'agissant de l'Iran, "le ton des rapports de l'AIEA ne correspond pas aux faits d?crits par l'Agence" et que celle-ci arrondit les angles pour donner ? T?h?ran une chance de se rattraper. Cette fois encore, on attend ? Washington de voir "comment les donn?es techniques" r?colt?es ces derni?res semaines seront "?clair?es".

"La question est de savoir si les Iraniens sont pr?ts ? nous offrir "the Full Monty" -la nudit? totale- ou s'ils se livrent ? un strip-tease", r?sume Patrick Clawsen, directeur adjoint de l'Institut de Washington pour la politique au Proche-Orient, interrog? par USA Today. Pour l'agence onusienne, qui utilise un langage plus pudique, des points essentiels du dossier iranien sont loin d'?tre ?claircis : les machines "contamin?es" avec des particules d'uranium hautement enrichi que l'on a trouv?es en 2003 sur le site pilote de Natanz et dans l'usine de Kalaye, ? T?h?ran, l'ont-elles ?t? en dehors d'Iran, c'est-?-dire avant leur importation du Pakistan ? Ou en Iran - ce qui serait l'indice d'un enrichissement pouvant conduire ? l'arme atomique ? Selon une source iranienne, la confirmation de la premi?re version, la plus favorable ? T?h?ran, va "prendre encore du temps".

Jo?lle Stolz

* ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 21.02.04

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CIA chief 'removed for incompetence'
From correspondents in Washington
21feb04
The CIA has reportedly recalled its top officer in Baghdad over doubts about his leadership abilities and closed several offices in Afghanistan amid security concerns.
A Los Angeles Times report, citing US intelligence sources, says the top Central Intelligence Agency officer in Baghdad was replaced in December.
The move came in the face of stepped-up attacks targeting civilians and coalition forces, the daily says.
It is the second time that the CIA chief in Baghdad has been replaced since President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq last May.
The Baghdad office has become the biggest in CIA history, even surpassing the size of its Saigon post at the height of the Vietnam War, the paper says.
There are nearly 500 CIA agents in Iraq.
A lack of Arabic-speaking agents and qualified officers willing to accept dangerous postings has forced the CIA to hire dozens or perhaps even hundreds of the agency's retirees, to rely heavily on translators and to enlist soldiers to fulfill CIA officers' tasks.
Meanwhile, the CIA is being taken to task in the United States, charged with providing the Bush administration with faulty intelligence on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which served as Washington's justification for launching its war.
? The Australian
----------------------------------------

CIA reportedly removes top officer in Baghdad
Fri 20 February, 2004 08:57
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has recently removed its top officer in Baghdad because of questions about his ability to lead the station there, the Los Angeles Times has reported.
U.S. intelligence sources also told the newspaper on Friday that the spy agency has also closed several satellite bases in Afghanistan because of security concerns.
Some current and former CIA officials, who requested anonymity, told the daily the agency was stretched thin as it searches for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, confronts insurgency in Iraq and tries to cultivate ties to warlords in Afghanistan.
A CIA spokesman could not be immediately reached for a comment on the report.
A senior U.S. official told the Times the CIA station chief in Baghdad was removed in December after deadly attacks against U.S. forces and Iraqi civilian targets.
"There was just a belief that it was a huge operation and we needed a very senior, experienced person to run it," the official told the Times.
According to a U.S. official cited by the daily, the CIA's Baghdad station is now the largest in agency history.
The Times quoted sources as saying that the main problem confronting the Baghdad station was security constraints that affect operatives' mobility.
Other sources said they were concerned the agency has been too focused on troop protection in Iraq, to the detriment of spy recruiting efforts. Such spies were described as critical sources of information as the United States transfers power back to Iraqis later this year.
High turnover among CIA employees in Iraq makes recruiting spies in the country nearly impossible, former CIA case officers told the newspaper.
In Afghanistan, a number of remote CIA bases have been closed in recent month, the Times said, quoting current and former CIA officials.
One former senior CIA official said the bases were closed because of security concerns. But a senior U.S. official told the Times they were closed for several reasons, adding that the number of personnel in Afghanistan was not reduced.
The paper said the closures have alarmed some in the intelligence community because remnants of the deposed Taliban regime appear to be regrouping and preparing attacks ahead of elections scheduled for this summer.
Earlier this month, the U.S. military's top general in Afghanistan expressed optimism that al Qaeda leader bin Laden would be captured this year.
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U.S. Freezes Accounts Of Large Saudi Charity
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A02
The Treasury Department ordered banks yesterday to freeze the accounts of the Oregon and Missouri branches of a large Saudi charity that U.S. officials say has been used to finance the al Qaeda terrorist network around the world.
FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents searched a home in Ashland, Ore., that is the U.S. headquarters for the charity, the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. The search is part of an investigation into allegations that the Oregon branch was involved in money laundering and income tax and currency-reporting violations, Treasury officials said.
Over the past two years, U.S. and Saudi authorities have intensified a joint crackdown on al-Haramain offices around the globe after concluding that they had funneled money, personnel and equipment to al Qaeda. Branches in Bosnia and Somalia were shuttered in 2002, and last December others were closed in Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan.
U.S. officials continue to investigate the foundation's headquarters in Saudi Arabia. Several weeks ago al-Haramain's chief, Aqeel al-Aqeel, was fired by top Saudi clerical authorities amid growing suspicions about his role at the charity.
Lawrence Matasar, an attorney for the al-Haramain office in Oregon, said charity officials in that state are cooperating with the government in the investigation. "We believe no crimes have been committed," he said.
Al-Haramain's headquarters in Saudi Arabia launched its Oregon office in 1997 by funding the work of an Ashland landscaper, Pete Seda, who had been sending Korans to prison inmates. The two people now mainly under investigation are Seda and Soliman Albuthe, a Saudi citizen who also helped run the Oregon organization.
Officials are investigating numerous financial transactions involving Albuthe and Seda, also known as Pirouz Sedaghaty, including allegations of transporting large sums of undeclared traveler's checks across U.S. borders. Under U.S. law, anyone transporting $10,000 or more in or out of the country must declare it to customs agents.
Agents are looking into $131,000 that was wired by a man in London to the Oregon foundation, which then dispatched Albuthe to transport the funds by traveler's checks to Saudi Arabia. The transaction was not properly reported to U.S. authorities, according to an affidavit filed in court in Oregon. The funds were ultimately destined for Muslim fighters or refugees in Chechnya, it said.
The affidavit also disclosed that a federal grand jury has been investigating al-Haramain's U.S. operations.
The U.S. branch of the charity has mainly distributed Islamic books and videos to Americans, and also helped establish a mosque in Springfield, Mo., with more than $370,000 provided by the Saudi headquarters.
One of the top leaders of that mosque was Kamran Bokhari, a student at Southwest Missouri State University, who was also the U.S. representative of a radical London-based group called al-Mujahiroun, which supports al Qaeda, according to the Site Institute, a terrorism research group.
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>> SAUDI WATCH CONTINUED...

U.S. freezes assets of charity in Ashland

Authorities suspect Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation officials helped funnel money to Islamic rebels in Chechnya
02/20/04
LES ZAITZ

Federal officials froze the assets Thursday of an Ashland charity suspected of illegally funding jihad -- Islamic holy war -- in Chechnya.
Treasury Department officials barred Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. from transferring money or property as a federal terrorism investigation continues. Federal officials said their move against the Oregon charity was part of a global drive to stop financing for terrorists.
The order came a day after federal agents searched the charity's Ashland headquarters Wednesday. Authorities suspect that two of the charity's directors funneled $150,000 to Saudi Arabia, where it may have been transferred to Chechen rebels. Federal documents say the two men hid the transaction by saying the money was spent to buy a mosque in Missouri.
No one has been arrested, and Treasury and Justice Department officials were tight-lipped Thursday about the Al-Haramain investigation.
The Oregon operation is part of a global charity with a similar name based in Saudi Arabia. Six of the Saudi charity's foreign branches have been declared supporters of terrorist organizations. U.S. and Saudi governments allege that those branches for years have funded al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.
Treasury officials didn't designate the Oregon operation a terrorist organization, but instead used terror-related authority to issue a "blocking order," freezing Al-Haramain's assets and giving Treasury officials time to investigate whether the Ashland branch supported terrorists.
"Looking at the Al-Haramain organization is an effort to uncover and unearth terrorist financing," Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Juan Zarte said Thursday at a Washington, D.C., briefing.
Oregon branch under suspicion
Federal terrorism investigators have made the Saudi charity and its branches a priority because of the global reach of its operations, which once operated on as much as $50 million a year. Investigators suspect the Saudi charity diverted millions from legitimate charitable work to terrorists.
Oregon's branch has been under suspicion as well. The Oregonian reported in November that the foundation and two of its officers -- Pete Seda and Soliman Al-Buthe -- have been on an FBI "watch list" of people involved in transactions that might support terrorism. The Oregon-linked names have been on the list of 300 people and organizations since at least early 2002.
Officials with the Oregon charity said they had nothing to do with terrorism and hadn't engaged in criminal conduct.
"I am a man of peace and have consistently and actively opposed terrorism," said Seda, a former Ashland arborist who helped establish the Oregon charity. "I am certain that once all the facts come out, it will be clear that neither Al-Haramain Oregon nor I have engaged in any criminal activities."
Seda opened Al-Haramain in Oregon in 1997 with money and leadership provided by the parent Saudi charity. Al-Haramain used a rural home just outside Ashland as a prayer house for local Muslims and a distribution center for Islamic books. Some books went to American prisons.
Seda left Oregon for the Middle East last February and issued his statement through an attorney in Washington, D.C.
The Oregonian got no response to messages left Thursday with two American attorneys representing Al-Buthe, a Saudi who is the Ashland charity's treasurer.
Another attorney, Larry Matasar of Portland, said Al-Haramain and its officials have been cooperating with investigators. He said he responded Tuesday to a federal grand jury subpoena with eight boxes of records.
About a dozen agents from the IRS, FBI and Customs conducted Wednesday's search.
Tax fraud alleged
IRS Agent Colleen Anderson outlined allegations of tax fraud in a 33-page affidavit filed in Medford U.S. District Court to get the search warrant.
On several occasions from 1997 to 2001, Al-Buthe brought significant sums of traveler's checks into the United States, according to declarations he made when entering the country, the affidavit said. In 13 trips, he reported bringing in $777,845, of which $206,000 was used to buy the Ashland headquarters in 1997, the affidavit said. But there is no explanation for the balance, Anderson wrote.
In early 2000, an Egyptian doctor wired a $150,000 donation from his London bank account to Al-Haramain's Ashland bank, according to the affidavit. An e-mail from the doctor said the money was meant "to participate in your noble support to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya."
At the time, Russian forces were battling Chechen rebels for control of the region. The fight was considered a jihad, or holy war, by some Muslim factions.
The affidavit said that 11 days after the doctor's donation showed up in Oregon, Al-Buthe traveled to Ashland from Saudi Arabia. He joined Seda at an Ashland bank and the two took out $130,000 -- buying 130 traveler's checks in $1,000 denominations, the affidavit said. A bank clerk suggested it would be easier to issue a cashier's check, the affidavit said.
"Seda said he could not take a cashier's check because the money was to help people and a lot of times these people may not be able to negotiate a cashier's check," the affidavit said.
Seda took an additional $21,000 in a cashier's check, giving that to Al-Buthe, the affidavit said. The check had the notation: "Donations for Chichania Refugees," the affidavit said.
The affidavit said Seda -- using the name Abu Yunus -- signed an agreement with Al-Buthe saying he was relinquishing the money for "brothers and sisters in Chechnya."
Within days, Al-Buthe returned to Saudi Arabia, failing to declare to Customs, as required, that he was taking the traveler's checks out of the United States, the affidavit said. Once back in Saudi Arabia, Al-Buthe cashed the traveler's checks and put the cashier's check into his personal account. The affidavit doesn't say what happened to the money.
The affidavit said Al-Haramain disguised what happened to the Egyptian's donation. It said the foundation's 2000 tax return underreported income by $21,000, underreported grants by $150,000, and overstated the price of a second prayer house that Al-Haramain bought in Missouri.
The tax return shows that "Seda, or one of his associates, improperly listed the $131,300 disbursement to Al-Buthe as funds used to purchase the Springfield prayer house," the affidavit said.
Anderson wrote, "It appears that Seda and Al-Buthe have attempted to conceal the movement of funds to Chechnya." Her affidavit doesn't explain why the money would first come into the United States and then be taken to Saudi Arabia.
The main Al-Haramain charity in Saudi Arabia "strongly supported" the mujahedeen fighters in 1999 and 2000, according to the affidavit. An article on the Saudi charity's Web site included a prayer for the fighters, seeking Allah's help against the Russian soldiers.
"Cripple their limbs and blind their sight, and send upon them an epidemic and calamities," the article said, according to the affidavit.
The Russian Federal Security Service in 2000 wrote in an intelligence assessment on Chechnya that Al-Haramain in 1999 provided $1 million in funding to Chechen rebels. The Russians reported that in 2000 they intercepted an Al-Haramain communication that said the charity "has allocated $50 million specifically for the needs of the mujahedeen."

Jim Barnett of The Oregonian staff contributed to this report. Les Zaitz: 503-221-8181; leszaitz@news.oregonian.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Saudi charity in Ashland on terrorism 'watch list'
An international group kicked out of 10 countries after being suspected of financing terrorism runs its U.S. branch in Oregon
11/09/03
LES ZAITZ
A Saudi Arabian charity shut down in 10 countries for suspected ties to al-Qaida and other terror groups operates in the United States through a branch in Ashland.
Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation is among the leading Saudi charities suspected of funneling millions of dollars to terrorists and is under intense scrutiny by U.S. and Saudi authorities. The Bush administration twice has dispatched high-level delegations seeking Saudi cooperation to shut down Al-Haramain.
The Senate Banking Committee is investigating "all sources of funding" for terrorists, including charities. "The operations, both domestically and abroad, of the Islamic charity Al-Haramain will be included in this examination," Andrew Gray, spokesman for committee chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told The Oregonian on Friday.
The Al Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. in Ashland has not been accused of any crime, and federal officials are reluctant to publicly outline their concerns because it would disrupt ongoing investigations.
But the FBI has placed the Oregon foundation and two of its directors on a "watch list" of more than 300 individuals and organizations with financial transactions that might have supported terrorism. Federal law enforcement sources say investigators are tracking the flow of money through the Oregon charity, including thousands of dollars transferred to Saudi Arabia.
In addition, families of some victims of the Sept. 11 attacks have sued the Ashland foundation saying it funded terrorism and is "specifically linked" to al-Qaida. A second lawsuit filed by insurers claims all four directors of Al Haramain in Oregon also were involved in an international terrorism network. The Saudi charity was named in both suits as well.
The Ashland foundation says it condemns terrorism and is only "loosely affiliated" with the Saudi charity. The two organizations are separate entities but have shared common leadership and funding.
Three of the Ashland foundation's directors are high-ranking officials in the Saudi foundation, one of whom said all of the roughly 50 international offices were under the "tight control" of the main Saudi charity.
Day-to-day operations in Ashland were run by Pete Seda, a local tree trimmer known in Southern Oregon as a peace advocate on behalf of Islam. Acquaintances say he rejected terrorism and urged people to get along.
"We are not aware of any individual in our organization who is involved in terrorist activity and we invite law enforcement agencies to help us find and eliminate anyone who may be involved," Seda told the Associated Press last year after the Saudi foundation's branches in Somalia and Bosnia were designated as terrorist organizations.
Seda and other officials with the Oregon and Saudi foundations didn't respond to telephone and e-mail messages or written questions, and the Oregon foundation's attorneys also declined repeated requests for comment.
When Saudi officials cracked down on Al-Haramain to close some of its international offices, the Saudi foundation's director general was defiant.
"We are like heroes in the Islamic world because America is against us," said Aqeel Abdul Aziz Al-Aqeel.
"We still can do the work in Bosnia and Somalia even if our offices there were closed," Al-Aqeel told the Saudi news media. "We can run the work through preachers. They can close the offices, but they cannot arrest all the preachers."
Until this year, Al-Aqeel also was president of Al Haramain in Oregon.
Charities called link to terrorism Islamic charities such as Al-Haramain of Saudi Arabia are targets in the global hunt for terrorism supporters. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have compiled detailed but classified portraits of which charities have helped terrorists.
In recent congressional testimony, federal officials and other witnesses said Saudi charities, which raise an estimated $4 billion a year, are a key source of money for terrorist organizations to attract and train recruits, run day-to-day operations and fund terrorist attacks.
"Almost nothing is more important on the battlefield of the war on terror than diminishing the flow of money," David Aufhauser testified in September before recently leaving his post as Treasury Department general counsel.
Aufhauser told Congress that Saudi charities have funded al-Qaida. He estimated al-Qaida operated on $35 million a year before the Sept. 11 attacks and now spends $5 million to $10 million. Investigators estimate the Sept. 11 jetliner attacks cost al-Qaida $500,000.
Lee Wolosky, a former National Security Council executive, told a national commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that al-Qaida's finances have been disrupted but not destroyed.
"As long as al-Qaida retains access to a viable financial network, it remains a lethal threat to the United States," Wolosky testified.
In an interview with The Oregonian, Wolosky said al-Qaida finances were built "on a foundation of charitable giving that is both highly organized and grass roots." He said some Islamic charities knowingly divert money to support terrorists, while others are unwitting accomplices. Telling which is which is an investigative challenge, he said.
U.S. officials say they have pressed the Saudis to cooperate with investigations. The Saudis say they have.
Nail Al-Jubeir, spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., told The Oregonian, "We are going after those who support terrorists, those who condone it and those who give them religious cover. We have been cracking down big time."
Saudi group's ties studied U.S. officials will say little about Al-Haramain operations in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Saudi foundation executives have been fending off suspicions, saying no one -- including the U.S. government -- has presented evidence that the Saudi organization is a terrorist sympathizer. But expert witnesses testifying before two Senate committees have pointed to several connections.
For example, an admitted al-Qaida operative in Indonesia told CIA interrogators that a Southeast Asia militant group was funded by money from Al-Haramain's branch in Indonesia. The militant group was later blamed for bombings in Indonesia.
And German authorities tracking al-Qaida activists and connections to the Sept. 11 attacks are investigating al-Qaida ties to a German mosque funded by Al-Haramain. The property is co-owned by Al-Aqeel, the top Al-Haramain official and co-founder of Al Haramain of Oregon.
In March 2002, U.S. and Saudi officials designated Al-Haramain branches in Bosnia and Somalia as terrorist organizations for funding al-Qaida and other groups. The Saudis ordered Al-Haramain to close its offices in those countries.
"We submitted the names of the individuals who worked in those offices to the United Nations as being involved in terrorism," said Adel Al-Jubeir, a Saudi crown adviser speaking at a news conference last summer in Washington, D.C.
Al-Aqeel -- the foundation's leader in Saudi Arabia -- told the Arab news media that Al-Haramain kept "tight control" of its international affiliates.
"The offices' directors are employees who follow the directions of the main office with regards to hiring workers at the offices and making any decisions on cooperation with any party," he said.
In May, the Saudis ordered eight more branches of the Saudi charity closed because of concerns they were involved in terrorism: Albania, Croatia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, Kosovo, Pakistan and Tanzania.
The Saudis acted after U.S. authorities "demonstrated that those offices were perverting the purposes of charity to do violence," Aufhauser told Congress.
"We looked at the other offices of Al-Haramain and we discovered that in many cases, the financial controls were not up to par," said Al-Jubeir, the Saudi adviser. "The individuals working in those offices, the vast majority of them were non-Saudis, about whose background the head organization knew very little."
Al-Aqeel told the Arab news media that Al-Haramain was harassed out of those countries.
"These countries cooperate with America," Al-Aqeel said. "They always accuse us, inspect us, raid us. It disturbed us."
Visible in Oregon after Sept. 11 Al Haramain was nearly invisible in Oregon before the Sept. 11 attacks. The foundation conducted business from a private mail box service. It also ran a prayer house that now sits behind padlocked gates and "No trespassing" signs along a rural highway just beyond the Ashland city limits.
Ashland seems an unlikely place for an international Islamic charity. Most major Islamic charities in the U.S. open in cities with large Muslim populations -- Detroit, Chicago, Houston.
But those cities didn't have Pete Seda, whose work on behalf of Islam apparently caught the attention of Saudi officials half a globe away.
Seda, 45, an Iranian immigrant also known as Perouz Seda Ghaty, came to the United States for an education in the 1970s. In Ashland, he became a skilled arborist known for saving local heritage trees. In a region with few Muslims, friends and acquaintances say Seda was always available to explain Islam at schools, churches and community forums.
In 1989, Seda set up a foundation to hand out Islamic books to prisoners in the United States and Canada, paying for the effort with profits from his tree business.
Raya Shokatfard, a longtime friend, said requests for books piled up. "He was getting 20, 30 letters a day from prisons," she said. "He was cutting trees, working his tail off to buy books."
Saudi representatives of Al-Haramain approached Seda in 1997, according to court records. They proposed setting up an American charity, funded with Saudi money, to hand out Islamic books.
Seda formed the Oregon branch of Al-Haramain with Soliman H. Al-Buthe of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who was also chairman of the Saudi charity's U.S. Committee. Al-Buthe put up the $187,126 cashier's check that bought the prayer house at Ashland's edge in late 1997, according to IRS records.
Area Muslims, including students recruited overseas for a local English language academy, attended Friday prayers at the property. Schoolchildren visited for what one person called "Islam 101" -- Seda's effort to share his religion. They sat on fat pillows on the floor and made friends with the foundation's camel.
Seda's Ashland attorney, David Berger, said that Seda had to regularly submit his budget and financial requests to the main Saudi foundation for approval.
In June 2000, the Oregon foundation bought a mosque in Springfield, Mo., for $461,542, which area residents proudly declared the first mosque "in the heart of the Bible Belt."
Springfield Muslims had approached Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia to buy a building for a mosque in their community. But the Saudi charity sent the money to Ashland to buy and hold title to the building, according to Berger and the foundation's tax records.
Seda changed the legal structure of the Oregon foundation in 1999 and won tax-exempt status from the IRS. Medford attorney Doug Gard said Seda and Al-Buthe insisted he rewrite the incorporation papers to include a rejection of terrorism. Gard complied, adding the statement: "Al Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. stands against terrorism, injustice, or subversive activities in any form, and shall oppose any statement or acts of terrorism."
Gard said the two men were troubled that Muslims were blamed for the 1998 bombing attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. They wanted to publicly oppose terrorism.
Yet the investigation of the bombings, instead of separating Al Haramain in Ashland from terrorism, yielded a connection.
A card, a connection
A simple business card belonging to one of the directors of Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia was found among the possessions of Wadih El-Hage, an al-Qaida operative in Kenya.
That business card not only was used by prosecutors to help convict El-Hage, but it also prompted families of the Sept. 11 victims to tie the Oregon Al Haramain to al-Qaida.
The card belonged to Mansour Al-Kadi, a Saudi. The card listed Al-Kadi as deputy director general of the Saudi Al-Haramain and "head" of its Africa Committee. He also was the vice president of the Oregon Al Haramain Foundation.
The Saudi charity's Kenyan operation was under suspicion of being among active "terrorist groups" even before the embassy bombing, according to a State Department report. Authorities had tried to blunt terrorist threats before the 1998 attacks.
That included investigating El-Hage, one-time personal secretary to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. In 1997, investigators searching El-Hage's home found Al-Kadi's card. El-Hage was arrested after the Kenyan bombing and convicted in 2001.
Prosecutors produced Al-Kadi's card along with others to show El-Hage's contacts with associates in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Kenya. Prosecutors portrayed El-Hage as a global emissary for bin Laden.
Al-Kadi was also one of four founding directors of the Ashland Al Haramain, according to incorporation papers. When the IRS asked for proof that foundation leaders had religious training, Al Haramain of Oregon turned in papers for only one -- Al-Kadi.
Because his business card from Kenya was among El-Hage's possessions, attorneys on behalf of Sept. 11 families claimed in a lawsuit that the Oregon foundation was linked to al-Qaida.
The Oregon foundation responded in court filings that it had no connection to any terrorist group. Al Haramain of Oregon complained it had been "dragged" into the mammoth case with approximately 200 other defendants because it was an Islamic organization and it shared directors with the Saudi operation.
In a statement the day after that suit was filed, Seda and Al-Buthe said the foundation had cooperated with law enforcement agents and steadfastly condemned the Sept. 11 attacks.
"On that day, not only was our country attacked, but the Islamic faith as well," they said.
Ashland attorney Susan Saladoff in October 2002 tried to get the Oregon foundation out of the case. She offered to open the Oregon charity's records, and have Seda and Al-Buthe sit for depositions and help the families' lawyers in their case against other defendants.
In return, Saladoff wanted Al Haramain dropped from the lawsuit. The offer went nowhere, and Al Haramain asked a federal judge to dismiss the case because there wasn't "a single scintilla of evidence" connecting the Oregon foundation to the Sept. 11 attacks or any other terrorism.
Earlier this year, the judge dismissed racketeering and negligence claims against the foundation but let stand for trial allegations that Al Haramain was part of an international terrorist conspiracy.
Portland Seven tie The Ashland charity also has a link to Oregon's highest-profile federal investigation.
In January 2002, federal officials arrested Sofiane T. Benziadi, 31, in Seattle on an immigration charge. Benziadi had moved to Portland from Ashland, where he had used the Al Haramain prayer house as his home address on vehicle registration papers. He also used the foundation's private mail box service and was listed for a time as office manager of Seda's tree business.
When arrested, Benziadi told investigators he knew of a failed mission to send Portland-area men to Afghanistan to wage war against U.S. troops. The so-called Portland Seven plot wouldn't become public until nine months after Benziadi's arrest.
Benziadi also said that after the mission failed, he was called by Habis Abdulla al Saoub, the former mujahedeen accused of leading the group. Benziadi said al Saoub kept the conversation general because he feared the FBI was monitoring it.
Benziadi left the country soon after his arrest. And U.S. officials later posted a $5 million reward for al Saoub, who was killed recently in Pakistan as part of an alleged al-Qaida cell attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
By early 2002, Seda, Al-Buthe and the Oregon foundation appeared on an FBI "watch list" related to financial transactions possibly linked to terrorism. Law enforcement agencies and financial institutions were asked to alert investigators if they had information on anyone appearing on the list.
Federal agents now are investigating the Ashland foundation's finances, including the transfer of thousands of dollars to Saudi Arabia.
One person familiar with the Oregon foundation's operations said a $40,000 check was dispatched to Saudi Arabia earlier this year just before Seda left the country. The source said the check went to Al-Buthe, the charity's treasurer who lives in Riyadh.
Law enforcement sources say more money flowed into the Oregon charity from Saudi Arabia than went back, but investigators also are examining donations that came to Ashland from around the United States.
Today, the Oregon foundation's status is uncertain. It maintains a mailbox service and telephone calls are handled by an answering service. The Web site it shared with Al-Haramain of Saudi Arabia is "closed for development."
Seda reportedly now lives in Dubai. He told friends he expects to return to Oregon by the end of the year, but his attorney isn't sure Seda will return.
Berger, Seda's attorney, said Seda told him he is seeking work overseas because his business suffered after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said Seda endured threats while in Oregon.
"He's been terrorized," Berger said. News researchers Kathleen Blythe and Margie Gultry contributed to this report. Les Zaitz: 503-221-8181; leszaitz@news.oregonian.com


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Plan for Caucuses In Iraq Is Dropped
U.S. to Seek New Transition Process
By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A01
The Bush administration is abandoning the core idea of its plan to hold regional caucuses for an Iraqi provisional government and will instead work with the United Nations and Iraqis to develop yet another plan for the transfer of political power by June 30, U.N. and U.S. officials said yesterday.
The decision, forced by rejection of the caucus system by a wide range of Iraqis, means that the Coalition Provisional Authority led by the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, will instead hand over authority to a caretaker government until direct elections can be held, officials said.
In a meeting at the United Nations yesterday, Secretary General Kofi Annan told a gathering of diplomats with interests in Iraq that the Iraqis themselves should determine the participants and form of a caretaker government that will be credible to Iraq's disparate society, according to U.N. officials who attended.
Annan is prepared to dispatch his special envoy, former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi, back to Baghdad in the coming weeks to help mediate a new formula if the Iraqis and the U.S.-led coalition do not come up with another plan, U.N. diplomats and U.S. officials said.
"We need to find a mechanism to create a caretaker government and . . . help prepare the elections later," Annan told reporters after briefing U.N. members who belong to the world body's 46-nation Friends of Iraq group.
As expected, Annan told the group the United Nations does not believe elections can be held before June 30, the date the U.S.-led coalition has said it will end the occupation. In a report to Annan, U.N. officials say, Brahimi cites broad agreement in Iraq that elections should be in late 2004 or early 2005.
The United States yesterday repeated its determination not to extend the June 30 deadline for ending the occupation.
"There are 133 days before sovereignty returns to an Iraqi government," Bremer said at a Baghdad news conference. "Changes in the mechanism for forming an interim government are possible, but the date holds. And hold it should."
With just more than four months remaining, the United States is effectively back at square one on how to create a provisional government to assume sovereignty. Because Iraqis have rejected other ideas, the challenge for the United States, the United Nations and Iraqi leaders will be to find a formula -- quickly -- that will provide political stability and be regarded as legitimate by the majority of Iraqis.
The Bush administration has essentially given up on the idea of further refining its troubled Iraq transition plan, already twice redesigned. The Nov. 15 plan, which the 25-member Iraqi Government Council initially accepted, called for a complex process culminating in 18 regional caucuses to pick members of a new national assembly, which in turn would pick a government and leadership.
"At the time we did this [plan] in November, it looked like a caucus system for finding a transitional assembly and a transitional government might have worked, but it does not appear that that caucus system has the support needed for it to work," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview with ABC Radio. U.S. and U.N. officials say they have no preference on how to select a caretaker government. "We have absolutely no preferred options," Annan told reporters. "We need to have the Iraqis discuss it. They must take ownership, discuss it amongst themselves, and we will try and work with them to find a consensus."
But Annan told a private luncheon for the 15-nation Security Council he is considering a range of ideas, senior diplomats who attended said.
Among the new ideas was a suggestion that Iraq be administered by a government of "technocrats," rather than politicians, until direct national elections are held.
In other options, Annan outlined one proposal to expand the Governing Council and a second idea to appoint a national assembly -- possibly through a national conference -- like the loya jirga used in Afghanistan to select an interim government, U.N. diplomats said.
Expanding the council so that it is a cross section of Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups might be the easiest formula, U.S. officials say. But the Bush administration is not certain that transferring sovereignty to an expanded council would earn the approval of Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whose initial objection to caucuses scuttled the administration's transition plan.
Annan plans to travel to Japan today and is expected to present U.S. and Iraqi leaders with recommendations after he returns on Feb. 25. Annan said the Security Council would probably have to adopt a new resolution in the months ahead to support his plans for political transition.
One issue still to be sorted out is the interim constitution, popularly known as the basic law. It is due to be concluded by Feb. 28 but has snagged on issues of religion and federalism. It was supposed to include provisions for a new provisional government.
To buy time for further negotiations, Annan said a new plan for the political transition did not have to be completed by Feb. 28.
In Baghdad, Bremer said the basic law must be based on secular, democratic principles and not draw on Islam as the sole source for legislation. "We have an obligation as the sovereign power that an appropriate democratic structure is put in place here while we are here so that we can deliver to the Iraqis what they want, which is a democratic, unified, stable country at peace with itself," Bremer said.
Violence continued Thursday as insurgents killed two American soldiers in a roadside bombing near Khaldiyah, 50 miles west of the capital, the U.S. command said.

Lynch reported from the United Nations. Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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>> NICE PICTURE?


SPIEGEL ONLINE - 20. Februar 2004, 16:11
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,287203,00.html
Image-Politur

"John Kerry rockt"

Von Frank Patalong

Der Mann sieht nicht nur kantig aus, er gilt auch als h?lzern: John Kerry mag Chancen auf die Pr?sidentschaft der USA haben, doch als Temperamentb?ndel gilt er nicht gerade. Vor vierzig Jahren jedoch tr?umte Kerry davon, ein Rockstar zu werden. Jetzt sucht er in sich den John von damals.
REUTERS
Yeah: Neuerdings spielt John Kerry sogar zwischen seinen Wahlkampfauftritten im Flieger zur Entspannung f?r die Fotografen
Aktuelle Umfragen zeigen John Kerry deutlich vor George W. Bush, und man muss sich Fragen, warum. Bushs Schuldenpolitik und seine Leistungen im Realit?ten-Verbiegen zur Rechtfertigung des Irak-Krieges konnten zwar nicht ewig unbemerkt bleiben und haben den noch amtierenden Pr?sidenten Punkte gekostet. Doch Kerry schien vor wenigen Wochen noch die denkbar schlechteste Wahl, den quirligen kleinen Pr?sidenten herauszufordern: Gro? und steif tapst er durch die Fernsehbilder, und wenn er zu einer Rede ausholt, dann aber gaaaaanz gr?ndlich und nicht zu schnell.
"Aaaaaaaai loooooove Neeeeeew Hampshire!" bejubelte Kerry den Sieg in seinem Heimatstaat in Zeitlupe und mit so tiefer wie unbewegter Stimme, dass man am liebsten die Geschwindigkeit heraufgedreht h?tte. Den Polit-Comedian Jon Stewart inspirierte das zu Vergleichen mit einem Frankenstein-Monster: "Braiiiiiin. Eeeeat braiiiiiin!"
Da wirkte das wohl gezielt gestreute Ger?cht, Kerry habe wie dereinst Clinton eine Aff?re mit einer Praktikantin gehabt, schon fast wie ein Weck-Signal, obwohl beide dies strikt leugnen: Sieh an, dachten sich da viele Kommentatoren, der Kerl lebt ja doch.
John Kerry: Nicht lustig?
Bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatten sich gerade die Satiriker und Comedians am marionettenhaften Kerry die Z?hne ausgebissen: W?hrend es seit Monaten eine Schwemme von Howard-Dean-Witzen gab, die John Liebermann-Ver?ppelungen ins Kraut schossen und auch John Edwards sein Fett abbekam, war es fast, als w?re Kerry gar nicht im Rennen.
Erst das Aff?ren-Ger?cht sorgte da f?r Munition: "Stimmt es", fragte sich Jay Leno, "dass John Kerry eine Aff?re mit einer Praktikantin hatte wie einst Clinton?"
"Ja!", beantwortete er die Frage selbst, "so ?hnlich. Nur ohne Zigarren!"
Mit einem Mal begann der ach so h?lzerne Kerry, einen Imagewandel zu vollziehen. Die Jungdynamiker unter den W?hlern h?tten sich vielleicht eher Howard Dean gew?nscht, w?hrend sich das linke Spektrum ausgerechnet auf den Vier-Sterne-General a.D. Wesley Clarke eingeschossen hatte. Bei beiden Gruppen k?nnte Kerry nun mit einer Entdeckung punkten, die so passend ans Licht der ?ffentlichkeit kommt, dass es schwer f?llt, an Zufall zu glauben: John Kerry, berichtete Anfang Februar die "Washington Post", tr?umte dereinst davon, ein Rockstar zu werden. Mehr noch: Als erster Pr?sidentschafts-Aspirant ?berhaupt hatte er vor mehr als 40 Jahren eine Platte aufgenommen.
Kerry spielte - da bleibt er seinem Image dann doch wieder treu - den Bass in einer Rockband namens "The Electras". Bassisten sind die netten Menschen, die gern ein wenig im Hintergrund stehen und - nicht selten mit gro?en H?nden - ihrem Instrument tiefe, sonore Einzelt?ne entlocken.
Die Botschaft: Ambition und Zuverl?ssigkeit
Dass kann Kerry bis heute, wie er am letzten Wochenende im gemeinsamen Gig mit dem Musiker Moby bewies. Der stresste den prominenten Politiker allerdings auch nicht und gab ein eing?ngiges Vier-Akkord-Liedchen von Bruce Springsteen zum Besten: So was wummert man auf dem Bass auch noch, wenn man vierzig Jahre nicht ge?bt hat. Doch darauf kommt es ja auch nicht an. Hauptsache, die Show macht Spa?.
Doch nicht so kultig: "Electras"-Scheibe, nach f?nf Tagen noch ohne Gebot
Einmal mehr scheinen sich die Demokraten also anzuschicken, einen Musiker in den Ring zu schicken.
Auf den Saxofonisten Clinton (da denkt man an Jazz, an Clubs, an edlen Schnappes und Zigarrenrauch) folgt der geradlinige Kerry: Der eine spielte ein Instrument, bei dem die Improvisation Pflicht ist, das auch qu?ken und kicksen und sich im Oberton ?berschlagen kann und soll. Der andere spielt Bass, ein Saiteninstrument, das eigentlich der Rhythmus-Sektion zuzurechnen ist: Verl?sslich muss stets der richtige Ton zum pr?zise richtigen Zeitpunkt kommen. Ist es nicht sch?n, was Kerrys Bandtr?ume nicht alles ?ber ihn aussagen?
F?r diesen vergleichsweise wilden Teil von Kerrys Vergangenheit interessieren sich nun viele in Amerika, und zum Gl?ck sind Kerrys ehemalige Band-Mitspieler alle auffindbar und redebereit. "Wir gr?ndeten die Band, um unsere Chancen zu erh?hen, dem anderen Geschlecht etwas n?her zu kommen!", verriet der Band-Pianist Jack Radcliffe der BBC.
Trickreich: Kerry, der Bass-spielende Norweger
Ein Ziel, dass die Jungs recht trickreich angingen: So ist dem Album-Cover zu entnehmen, dass der schlanke, hochgewachsene Bassist John ein waschechter Norweger sei. Das war zwar gelogen, zeigte aber Wirkung, wie Kerry zugibt: "Sie rissen uns nicht gerade die Kleider vom Leib, aber wir haben unseren Spa? gehabt!"
Die "Electras" spielten fast ausschlie?lich instrumental. H?fliche Kritiker bezeichnen die Musik als "rohen, geradlinigen Rock'n' Roll". Allein Jon Prouty, einst Gitarrist der Electras, bringt es ehrlicher auf den Punkt: "Die Platte war schrecklich."
Die BBC hat ein kleines Sound-Sample zu bieten, das der Sender irgendwo ausgegraben hat, und "Newsweek" schaffte es am Donnerstag gar, ein kleines Video zu entstauben: Schon verbl?ffend, wie die Zeugnisse aus dem Jahre 1961 so pl?tzlich wieder auftauchen.
Andererseits h?tte Kerry ja auch fast ein halbes Jahr Zeit gehabt, daf?r zu sorgen, denn bereits im letzten September konfrontierte ihn auf einer Wahlkampf-Veranstaltung ein findiger Plattenlabel-Eigner ?berraschend mit seiner Band-Vergangenheit. Schlagzeilen macht die erst jetzt, p?nktlich zum Endspurt im Bewerbungsrennen um die Pr?sidentschaftskandidatur der Demokraten: Ein Schelm, wer B?ses dabei denkt.
Knallerstory mit leichter Ladehemmung
Doch so richtig "Kult" will die Electras-Geschichte noch nicht werden. Bei eBay wechselt wom?glich an diesem Wochenende bereits die zweite Electras-Scheibe den Besitzer, wenn sich denn ein K?ufer findet. Nachdem ein erstes, vor wenigen Tagen versteigertes Album die Summe von 2500 Dollar brachte, offerierte jemand ein zweites Exemplar zum Startpreis von stolzen 2100 Dollar. Doch nach f?nf Tagen hatte sich noch kein Bieter gefunden - und dass, obwohl man in den wirklich publikumstr?chtigen eBay-Auktionen normalerweise sogar seinen eigenen Schatten verkaufen kann.
Ein Sammlerst?ck ist das Laien-Machwerk allemal: Nat?rlich erschien das erste und einzige Album dieser Electras im Eigenverlag (es gab noch mindestens zwei weitere Bands dieses Namens, die Platten ver?ffentlichten) und mit der Mikro-Auflage von nur 500 St?ck. Mehr konnten sich selbst die betuchten Jungs der Band, die als Sch?ler-Kapelle an der elit?ren St Paul's-Privatschule gegr?ndet worden war, nicht leisten. F?r einen richtigen Plattenvertrag hatte es nie gereicht.
Das allerdings k?nnte sich nun ?ndern: Schon wird ?ber eine Neuauflage der Scheibe gemunkelt, und John Kerry scherzte gegen?ber "Newsweek" jovial ?ber ein m?gliches Comeback der Band: "Wenn die Blues Brothers und Fleetwood Mac wieder vereinigt werden k?nnen, sollte das bei den Electras ein Klacks sein." Seine Vereidigungsfeier sei da ein m?glicher Termin.
Nicht alles Theater
Ob es dazu je kommt, h?ngt aber nicht nur von den amerikanischen W?hlern ab. Perkussionist Andy Gagarin etwa outet sich als "konservativer Republikaner", der "auf keinen Fall" Kerry seine Stimme geben werde. Auch Radcliff betonte, die Mehrheit der ehemaligen Band w?rde es vorziehen, "George Bush Bass-Stunden zu geben, als John Kerry einzusetzen".
Doch selbst so ehrliche Statements wird der scheinbar so h?lzerne Kerry zu seinem Vorteil zu nutzen wissen: Erst diese despektierlichen Unkenrufe machen die Fast-ein-Rockstar-Story glaubhaft.
Die versucht Kerrys Wahlkampf-Team nach Kr?ften zur Image-Politur zu nutzen: Mit einem Mal sieht man Kerry nun auf Fl?gen zwischen Wahlkampfauftritten klampfen, und seine Kampagnen-Website zitiert gen?sslich das Urteil des Plattenmanagers Erik Lindgren, der im September die erste Electras-Platte ausgegraben hatte: "John Kerry rockt!"
Ungl?cklich ?ber die ganze Geschichte d?rfte auch Radcliffe kaum sein: Als einziger der Electras war er vierzig Jahre bei der Musik geblieben und schlug sich als Pianist durch, der "alles von Tschaikowsky bis Jerry Lee Lewis" beherrsche. Zurzeit arbeitet er kr?ftig an seiner Website, verspricht, in K?rze Sound-Samples von den Electras bieten zu k?nnen und ist wohl auch an der Wiederauflage des Albums von 1961 nicht ganz unbeteiligt. Vorteilhaft entwickeln sich eben stets die M?rchen mit einer wahren Wurzel.

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

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Romney rips bid to protect Kerry seat
By Frank Phillips and Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff, 2/20/2004
NORTH ATTLEBOROUGH -- Governor Mitt Romney yesterday denounced a maneuver by Democrats on Beacon Hill to block him from naming an interim replacement if US Senator John F. Kerry wins the presidency and resigns his Senate seat.
"It is clearly partisan," Romney told reporters at a campaign stop for GOP state Senate candidate Scott Brown. "I don't think even the Democratic leadership will get behind that."
"If a Democrat were in the corner office, there would be no discussion about this issue," the governor said. "This is coming up because there is a Republican governor."
Romney, who under current law would fill the vacancy with a temporary appointment, also vowed he would not appoint himself. He said that he would run for reelection in 2006.
"I am planning to be in this position all four years, maybe eight if I am lucky enough to be reelected," Romney said. "I fought long and hard for this job, and I am not going to give it up."
The Globe reported yesterday that the House chairman of the Joint Committee on Election Law, Representative William Straus, is pushing legislation that would require a special election shortly after a vacancy occurred in a US Senate seat. The bill would not permit an interim appointment by Romney.
Straus's proposal is expected to be taken up when House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini meet privately tomorrow to discuss a number of issues, including the battle for a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. A spokesman for Finneran said the House leader had no comment on the issue. Travaglini could not be reached.
If Straus's proposal were to become law and Kerry were to become president, Romney would be blocked from naming an interim senator who would stand for election in 2006 to fill out the term, which expires in January 2009. The seat would instead remain vacant until a special election.
Democrats argue that the interim office holder would have all the advantages of an incumbent. They said it gives too much power to one person -- Romney -- to determine who the state's next US senator should be.
"The voters should have the right to elect US senators, and it should not be left to Governor Romney," said Philip W. Johnston, the state Democratic Party chairman. "As a public policy matter, it is hard to argue that it is not more democratic to allow the voters to chose who will be a US senator than leave it to one person to make this momentous decision."
But Romney scoffed at the notion, saying the law has been in place for 82 years and used by Democratic governors in the past.
"You really don't want to create a monopoly that has so much power it is going to change the law in such a blatantly partisan way and at a time when people are really looking to have fairness and equality on Beacon Hill," Romney said.

? Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

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The Coming of Nemesis
Hubris and the law of unintended consequences.
Irony, paradox, hubris, and nemesis are all Greek words. They reflect an early Western fascination with natural, immutable laws of destiny, perhaps akin to something like the eastern idea of karma -- that excess and haughtiness can set off a chain of events that are neither predicable nor welcome.
Take the recent controversy about President Bush's military record. Heretofore, Mr. Kerry had wisely decided to let the sleeping dogs of Vietnam lie, perhaps cognizant of how the "bloody shirt" had once tainted and polluted 50 years of late-19th-century American presidential campaigns. Besides, the Republicans had not looked good in questioning the fine character of Max Cleland, whose service to his country deserved better. In the primaries, the genuinely war-heroic Mr. Kerry seemed to realize that it was not wise to question Howard Dean's skiing in Aspen under the aegis of a medical deferment. After all, most Americans were more interested in talking about winning the present war rather than crying over losing the past one -- and Vietnam was a morass that tarred everyone who lumbered in.
In 1992, Mr. Kerry had, quite soberly, called for an end to recriminations about Mr. Clinton's draft record. And that was wise. From time to time he had gone on record to emphasize how tumultuous the late 1960s and 1970s were -- and that what was said and done then was often a result of passion rather than reason. Kerry seemed to remember -- and for that reason he was rightly cautious -- that many Vietnam veterans against the war at the time had left a paper trail of greater respect for the resisters and draft-evaders who chose not to participate in an "immoral" war than for some of their fellow warriors who went over to serve and "kill." Indeed, up until about 1980, the popular mythology for millions was that a Vietnam veteran deserved less respect than a draft-resister. Of course, we forget that absurdity now in the days of the bloody shirt, but it was nevertheless true and explains the near inexplicable contortions and subsequent reinventions of that generation that we witness today.
So Mr. Kerry rightly sensed that, while his own combat record was beyond reproach, his subsequent strident antiwar activities surely were not -- ranging from confessionals about war crimes to throwing away someone else's medals before the cameras. And Kerry was even wiser in appreciating that while a sort of mytho-history had emerged, asserting that Vietnam-era protesters once attacked the government only, never the soldiers themselves, most Americans of the era remembered a very different reality: Veterans in fact routinely and unfairly were accused of atrocities, and were slandered. Returning GIs were sometimes divided between those who felt that their service was honorable, and those who sought exculpation or popular acceptance from the protest generation by maligning fellow soldiers as agents of immorality.
Thus it was prudent to let all this alone, and not take the bait of thinking a decorated veteran who opposed the war could score points against a supporter of it who did not serve. But the Democrats were not content.
Instead, they floated old accusations that a twenty-something George Bush, who strapped himself into something as dangerous as an obsolete, fire-belching, and occasionally explosive F-102, was somehow near treasonous. Young Bush may have been impetuous and he apparently missed some roll calls, but anyone who rides the stratosphere a few inches above a jet engine is neither a coward nor a man who shirks either danger or responsibility.
Now the Democrats who thought up this low hit on the president will reap what they have sown -- as Kerry's entire (and ever-expanding) record of ancient slips and slurs will unnecessarily go under full scrutiny, the sometimes shameful words of a rash and mixed-up youth unfairly gaining as much attention as once brave deeds. By August the American people will be sick to death of Kerry's pandering to veterans -- or perhaps as indifferent to his medals as they were to the equally stellar record of sometimes-failed candidates like Bob Dole, Bob Kerry, John McCain, or Gray Davis.
The WMD controversy is similar. It is legitimate to question the nature of American intelligence as long as the fate of Saddam's once-undeniable arsenal remains murky. And the Democrats can legitimately score points in alleging that the administration put too much emphasis on a single case for war when there were a dozen other reasons for regime change that were far more compelling.
But they were not content with that fair enough tactic. No, they had to press on with really offensive rhetoric -- Messrs. Gore and Kennedy alleging conspiracies, near treason, and the "worst" diplomatic decision in U.S. history. A sad cast of provocateurs and Vietnam War-era retreads like Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Not in Our Name were more often to be the intellectual godheads of the Democratic response than the ghosts of Harry Truman, JFK, and Scoop Jackson. A Hubert Humphrey would not have let a creepy Abbie Hoffman in the same room with him; Wesley Clark smirks on stage alongside a buffoonish Michael Moore as the latter calls a war-time president a deserter.
Yet the problem with this additional slander is that the war, in fact, has turned out to have a lot to do with WMD -- and will bring dividends that are far more important even than disarming Saddam. Pakistan is now revealing the extent of its nuclear treachery; the developments in Libya are surreal, but inexplicable apart from the removal of Saddam; and a newly energized U.N. inspection team suddenly finds traction with Iran. Thus the more the Democrats allege American fantasies about WMD, the more quite dangerous regimes instead see reality -- and fear that their own arsenals might ensure them a rendezvous with something analogous to the fate of Saddam Hussein.
The same irony is true about the hysteria over the poor Europeans, "unilateralism," and "preemption." The Democrats, soberly and carefully, could have tried to argue that the administration and many of us sympathetic to it were unnecessarily blunt and in need of diplomatic niceties. A fair enough charge that would have received, in turn, a fair enough, unapologetic rebuttal. But the campaigning instead brought bizarre allegations by Clark, Kerry, and Dean that the Bush administration has ruined the trans-Atlantic relationship and that we were now de facto alone in the Western world. In fact, human nature being what it is in respecting strength, action, and military success, the United States finds itself in a position of unique power vis-?-vis both allies and enemies.
Europe, albeit kicking and screaming, is just beginning to appreciate its new enhanced role as "good cop" that warns the likes of Iran and Syria not to upset the "unpredictable" Americans when they should work within their own multilateral auspices. Europeans know better than the Democrats that only American threats of force ever cut any ice in the Middle East. Kofi Annan privately grasps that the belated U.N. effort to return their inspectors to Iraq was possible only because of George Bush's promise to use force -- a threat that had a credible shelf-life of only a few months. Even the U.N. is not so much furious at Mr. Bush as intrigued and scared: intrigued that they might regain credibility if a more harnessed and circumspect America can nevertheless repeat its resolve to enforce U.N. sanctions; and scared that after last autumn's U.N. machinations, hypocrisy, and anti-Americanism, we find them all an embarrassment if not irrelevant altogether.
Europe is also startled and embarrassed that Mr. Bush and Co. yelled out at the NATO parade that the emperor was, in fact, buck naked -- and that a continent with a larger population, economy, and territory than the United States was in no need of massive American military support when its own citizenry had whipped itself into a frenzy of smug and hypocritical ingratitude. Ditto the Koreans. Democrats yell about "imperialism," even as allies worry about our new "isolationism" -- go figure.
Thus just as we witness Democratic hysteria over purported estrangement, the Europeans are far more worried about the future of NATO and their own self-induced severance from the greatest military power in the history of civilization. Only now do they realize that if they don't commit more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan there are simply few reasons for the alliance to exist -- and none at all for tens of thousands of Americans to protect their soil at times of scary things like the Olympics, more terrorists flocking into Europe, and mounting Muslim anger against belated French efforts to stand up to Islamic fundamentalism.
What a strange spectacle then now awaits us in the summer presidential campaign to come. Democrats will plead for more sensitivity to European needs -- even as more neutral observers concede that for the first time in decades a new honesty and maturity is entering the trans-Atlantic relationship precisely because Mr. Bush pulled back the curtain and exposed the hypocrisy of an anti-Americanism so fashionable in the out-of-touch European shire.
No one wishes to occupy a country. But after the instability in Iraq and a cost nearing 400 combat deaths the Democrats are now not merely questioning the tactics of achieving democracy in Iraq, but the entire notion of occupation itself. But once they go down that road they will discover history is not on their side and will be hard put to offer better alternatives to the present course.
For the record, not occupying Germany in 1918 led to the myth that the Prussians were never beaten, but stabbed in the back while occupying foreign territory -- a terrible mistake not repeated with postwar Japan and Germany. It might have been neater and quicker to leave Afghanistan after the Soviets were expelled in the 1980s and to depart Haiti in a flash, but the wages of those exit strategies were the Taliban and September 11 as well as the current mess in the Caribbean. The first Bush administration left the present jumble in Iraq to the second, which to its everlasting credit is determined not to leave it to others. Had Mr. Clinton bombed and then just left the Balkans, rather than the present costly and bothersome peace we would have had the sectarian and tribal sort of ruin that surely will get worse if we run now from Iraq.
Since the Democrats viciously and clumsily have attacked one of the most courageous (and humane) policies of any administration in the last 30 years, the American people will soon come to ask what they in fact will propose instead ("put up or shut up"). Most of us are cognizant that bombing from 40,000 feet gives an "exit strategy," but, without soldiers on the ground, postpones the problem of tyrannical resurgence -- and thus will inevitably leave either another war for another generation or something far worse still on the horizon like September 11.
There were a number of legitimate areas of debate for the fall campaign -- deficits, unfunded security measures at home, moral scrutiny over postwar contracts, more help for Afghanistan, greater control of domestic entitlements, unworkable immigration proposals, and the like. But instead of statesmanship from the opposition, we got slander about Mr. Bush's National Guard service, misrepresentations about intelligence failures that had hampered both previous administrations and the present congress, preference for an unsupportable European position over our own, and stupidity about what to do in Iraq.
The Democrats may have seen some short-term gains from all the attention given to their bluster, but theirs still remain untenable issues. And so nemesis will bite them like they will not believe in the autumn -- and, of course, just when it matters most.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200402200838.asp

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French paper: EU panel finds Arafat did not fund terrorism
Herb Keinon Feb. 19, 2004
A week after the German paper Die Weld reported suspicion is growing that money from Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's office was transferred to terrorist organizations, the French daily Liberation reported Wednesday that a report being prepared by the EU's anti-fraud unit (OLAF) will show no financial tie between Arafat and terrorism.
The paper reported that according to its sources the report will show that Arafat did not use financial assistance from the EU to "help in any way to fund terrorist organizations like the Aksa Brigades."
The OLAF report on whether hundreds of millions of euros to the PA was misused is slated to be released in March.
Following the Liberation report, a spokesman for the European Commission said, "We are waiting for OLAF to publish the report."
Following the Die Weld report, which also indicated OLAF investigators had authenticated documents Israel provided the EU linking Arafat to terrorist groups, OLAF released a statement saying it has "not finalized its investigation.
Therefore, any conclusions attributed to OLAF are premature and are not confirmed by evidence."
Ilka Schroeder, a German European Parliament member affiliated with the Green Party, who was among those who pushed for an investigation of how EU money to the PA was being spent, sent an open letter to the three presidents of a "working group" in the European Parliament dealing with the issue on Thursday, discounting the conclusions as reported in Liberation.
"It is known that the Aksa Brigades are closely linked with the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Arafat and that they have committed several suicide bombings against Israelis," she wrote. "It is known that not only school books, but also radio and TV stations, prayers paid by the state [sic], and official newspapers spread hate against Israel and anti-Semitic prejudice. If OLAF shouldn't know this or should not be capable to make the logical conclusions from these facts, then OLAF is simply the wrong institution to investigate this course of events."
Schroeder called on OLAF to immediately release a first "confidential" paper it reportedly wrote on the issue, and suggested "that the European Parliament apologize publicly and admit the fatal role of the European Union in the war against Israel [which will make it easier for victims and the surviving dependants to sue the EU]."
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, head of Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center, filed a NIS 100 million suit in the Tel Aviv District Court in May 2002 against the EU on behalf of an Israeli family decimated by a terrorist attack in August 2001.
The law suit alleges that the EU recklessly provided the PA with massive sums of financial aid, while knowing that the money was being diverted from its intended civilian purposes to Palestinian terrorist groups.


This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1077164219985&p=1006688055060
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