September 2001

US and Britain to strike terror camps within days
Posted: Sunday, September 30, 2001

( Guardian Unlimited ) Devastating attacks on bases controlled by Osama bin Laden are set to be launched in the next 48 hours as part of a tightly focused military operation approved by US President George Bush and backed by Britain.
The strategy, which is a victory for pragmatists in both Britain and America, is designed to kill bin Laden and his forces, and will be launched in tandem with strikes against air and ground forces of the Taliban regime supporting him.

The operation, which British and US sources say could be launched as early as today, would begin with air and missile strikes to destroy the Taliban's 20-aircraft air force, remove anti-aircraft missile batteries, and destroy Taliban tanks and other armour.

In a clear sign that strikes were imminent, Bush declared last night, after a meeting with military advisers at Camp David: 'America will act deliberately and decisively, and the cause of freedom will prevail.' MORE

Saudis air base blow for US
Posted: Sunday, September 30, 2001

The Saudi Arabian Government has ruled out the use of bases on its territory for American-led strikes against Afghanistan's ruling Taleban.

"We do not accept the presence in our country of a single solider at war with Muslims or Arabs," Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan was quoted as saying in a government-run newspaper on Sunday.

The prince dismissed as nonsense reports that Saudi authorities would allow Washington to use its bases to attack Afghanistan.

However, he did say Saudi airspace could still be used as his country's contribution.

The BBC Middle East correspondent says this implies that America planes could fly over Saudi Arabia in their operations.

Our correspondent says the Saudi Government appears to have bowed to the sensitivies of its Muslim population and refused to have any part in the expected western action.

On Friday, President George W Bush said he was "most pleased" with the co-operation the US was getting from countries in the Middle East for its global campaign against terrorism.

That was seen as confirmation that Saudi Arabia had decided to allow US forces to make use of a vital command centre launch at a military base outside Riyadh.

VENEZUELA: Montesinos’ Capture
Posted: Sunday, September 30, 2001

WORLD PRESS REVIEW - The dramatic capture and extradition in late June of former Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos-after an intensive international search uncovered his hiding place in Caracas-has provoked a major diplomatic flap and fueled heated political controversy in Venezuela over the role of President Hugo Chávez and his government in the Montesinos affair.

Venezuelan security forces’ June 23 arrest of Montesinos, sought by Peruvian authorities to face multiple charges of corruption, bribery, and human-rights violations during his tenure as spymaster and political power broker under former President Alberto Fujimori, came just two days after Chávez's widely reported assurance to Peruvian President-elect Alejandro Toledo that Montesinos "will be returned to your country sooner than a rooster can crow if he is in Venezuela," the centrist El Nacional of Caracas (July 9) reported. MORE

Minister blasts western media's handling of terrorist attacks
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

IRNA -- Minister of Culture and the Islamic Guidance Ahmad Masjed Jamei on Saturday criticized the way the western media handled the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11.

He said that the plight of the Muslims across the world in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks is the outcome of the way the western media covered the incident attributing it to the Muslims.

Masjed Jamei was speaking in a ceremony at IRNA held to welcome its new Managing Director Abdollah Nasseri Taheri, and to bid farewell to former managing director Fereydoun Verdinejad.

IRNA operates under the Ministry of Culture and the Islamic Guidance whose minister holds presidency of IRNA's general assembly, the top policy-making body of the news agency.

Masjed Jamei recommended that IRNA undertake decisive role in enlightening the international press community.

He said that dynamic news network, if it does its duty well, will make good on the weakness in the information system on possibility of an event which may happen.

He also recommended that IRNA's bureaux abroad form relationship with intellectuals of foreign countries and reflect their views in their news analyses.

Aid convoys heads for Afghan capital
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - U.N. aid shipments are heading for war-ravaged and isolated Afghanistan for the first time since they were suspended shortly after the devastating attacks on the United States.

All shipments had been stopped and foreign aid workers pulled out of the country after the attacks on New York and Washington, but aid agency officials said they needed to resume supplies because of a vicious cycle of drought and war.

Two shipments left on Saturday, one carrying 100 tonnes of food for the capital Kabul, and another with 200 tonnes of food and warm clothing for children living in opposition-controlled areas in the north of the country.

The food for Kabul, which is held by the ruling Taliban movement, was sent by trucks by the World Food Programme on a trial basis.

"Once we ensure that food aid is reaching the most needy people inside Afghanistan and local trucks continue to be available to move it from our warehouses inside the country to the rural areas, we will move more food into Afghanistan," said Khaled Adly, a WFP regional director. MORE

Thousands flock to U.S. anti-war rally
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters have peacefully flooded the streets of America's capital to call for peace, as President George W. Bush moved forward with plans a military strike against those responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Chanting "war is not the answer," an estimated 10,000 demonstrators assembled peacefully only blocks from the White House on Saturday. Their voices rose in opposition to the "war on terrorism" that the Bush administration declared on Saudi-born militants including Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the attacks, which left 6,500 dead or missing.

"War is not the answer because the events on September 11 were not the first battle in the war. This has been an escalating cycle of violence," Brian Becker, one of the protest organisers, told Reuters.

"The U.S. has tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East. They occupy Saudi Arabia, they bomb Iraq every week, they impose economic sanctions in Iraq so dreadfully that the (United Nations) say 1.5 million Iraqi people have died," he added.

Many of the protesters travelled from across the country to join the rally. James Creedon, a rescue worker in New York City, left the rubble of Ground Zero, where the World Trade Centre once stood as a symbol of America's economic might, to join the medical teams at the protests.

British journalist 'to be tried for spying'
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

British journalist Yvonne Ridley is to be tried for spying after being arrested in Afghanistan by the Taliban, according to Pakistani press reports.

Urdu newspaper Inquilab and Kabul radio quote highly placed sources in the administration who said that Ms Ridley is being held prisoner in a military camp near the Afghan frontier town of Jalalabad.

The Sunday Express reporter, who was arrested along with two Afghan guides, was allegedly not carrying a passport or a Taliban permit. Spying under the Taliban dispensation carries the death penalty.

The newspaper quoted an official as saying that an enquiry has been ordered and will take time to complete.

He continued: "We have rules to deal with intruders and spies. If she had no ulterior motive, why would she have entered Afghanistan illegally and that too in a disguise?

"We have left it our courts to decide if she is innocent."

Foreign media were ordered to leave Afghanistan after the US stepped up its demand for the extradition of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden in connection with the September 11 terror attacks.

Disgraced archaeologist admits more fakes
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

Shinichi Fujimura, an archaeologist who admitted to falsifying two Paleolithic stone tool findings in northern Japan, has now confessed to faking the discovery of the world's oldest stone tool, which had been broken up and its parts dispersed separately in two prefectures, archaeological association officials said Saturday.

Fujimura made the latest confession to a special Japanese Archaeological Association investigation committee after he announced in December 1997 that the two pieces of the implement, discovered in Yamagata and Miyagi prefectures, were found to match each other, the officials said. The sites are about 30 kilometers apart.

The pieces of the tool — thought to date back 100,000 years — were found respectively at the Sodehara 3 site in Obanazawa, Yamagata Prefecture and the Nakajimayama site in Shikama, Miyagi Prefecture.

The officials added Fujimura suggested he falsified results from at least 20 other locations, but did not provide details about them.

The 51-year-old former deputy director of the Tohoku Paleolithic Institute in Tagajo, Miyagi is suspected of fabricating findings at 33 excavations in eight prefectures, but insisted in a press conference last November he had only faked two.

Those were artifacts at Kamitakamori in the Miyagi town of Tsukidate, and Soshin Fudozaka in Shintotsukawa, Hokkaido in fiscal 2000.

During a reexamination of his finds in April to August, the association developed suspicions regarding six sites, including Itouchimatsubayama in Fukushima Prefecture, after detecting what appeared to be excavation marks made by tools.

Last Sunday, the association said it had analyzed stone tools unearthed at two important locations in Miyagi — Razaragi and Babadan — and grew suspicious about them.

Earlier, a team led by Fujimura said the Razaragi site, found in 1981, was in a layer of earth 42,000 years old, and the Babadan site, found in 1984, was 170,000 years old.

Meanwhile, Norio Ono, mayor of the city of Obanazawa, said he feels deep regret and disbelief at how Fujimura fooled people, adding he wants a personal apology from him.

The archaeologist's descriptions of staging finds have also affected textbook publishers, prompting them to correct history texts on Paleolithic tools.

In November, Fujimura admitted to burying stone tools from his personal collection at Kamitakamori and Soshin Fudozaka, explaining he had been "tempted." He has since been hospitalized. (Kyodo News)

Algerian Terrorists Arrested In Spain
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

( infocentre.ru ) Among 32 video tapes seized from 6 Algerian terrorists arrested in Spain there are some showing a "practice" blowing up of a truck by Chechen militants in the environs of Argun, southern Chechnya, said Juan Cotino, director-general of the Spanish police.

He noted that the militants shown on the video are using the same type of radio transmitters as the ones seized from Algerian terrorists in Valencia.

It was reported earlier that the radio transmitters had been sent by them to Chechnya together with night-vision instruments and other high tech electronic devices, as well as all kinds of forged documents.

Another video believed to have been filmed in Algeria and Pakistan shows an execution of captured soldiers, with burst of automatic fire accompanied by calls for a jihad under Osama bin Laden.

Cotino said that so far the police has scrutinized only 5 videos. Careful examination of the remaining 27 tapes is continuing. From...

U.S. Cannot Save Face by Defeating Taleban
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

TEHRAN A Pakistani official was quoted as saying yesterday that the United States will not compensate for its humiliation by defeating the Taleban.

He was apparently referring to the Sept. 11 attack on the United States, which proved the United States vulnerable to terrorist assaults. The former Pakistani intelligence chief, in an interview with Qatari Al Jazeera television, said that there is disorder in the U.S. administration and that no policy has been adopted to recover from the disorder.

On why the White House does not reveal its evidence of Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden's involvement in the attack to its European allies, the Pakistani official said that the U.S. problem is not bin Laden and they know it. Elaborating further on the issue, he said that the United States is trying to fight against many other countries in a war and disturb the peace in the Persian Gulf, adding that this is one of the reasons Washington has presented no evidence.

Israeli soldiers have killed two Palestinians
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

Israeli soldiers have killed two Palestinians and wounded more than 100 in an upsurge of violence that is straining a truce many hope may help rally Muslim states behind the United States' anti-terror coalition.

Israeli and Palestinian officials warned the ceasefire would collapse if there were no let up in the violence, which followed a reaffirmation on Wednesday of a truce plan by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

"Death to Israel" chanted thousands of Palestinians as an effigy of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was hanged in Gaza City at a rally marking the anniversary of the start of a revolt in which an estimated 602 Palestinians and 169 Israelis have died.

Protests and rallies took place across the West Bank and Gaza on Saturday, following commemorative events on Friday.

Troops battled hundreds of Palestinian stonethrowers at various spots in the Gaza Strip on Saturday in an upsurge of confrontations reminiscent of the start of the uprising, which erupted a year ago after peace negotiations became deadlocked. MORE

Biggest Muslim body to meet on attacks in U.S.
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

DOHA (Reuters) - Representatives of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims will hold emergency talks in Qatar next month to forge a united stand over possible U.S. military action against Muslim Afghanistan, say Qatari officials.

The officials told Reuters on Saturday that Qatar, current head of the 56-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), was awaiting confirmation from member states they would attend, but preparations for the meeting were still moving ahead.

One senior official said Arab ministers from the Jeddah-based organisation would meet on October 8 and a full OIC foreign ministers' meeting would follow on October 9.

The United States has begun a massive build-up for potential retaliation against Afghan-based militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organisation, suspected by Washington of being behind the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

President Mohammad Khatami of Iran, one of the OIC's most influential members, called for the meeting shortly after the attacks, saying Muslim states must coordinate their stance towards terrorism. MORE

Taliban says no foreign special forces in Afghanistan
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2001

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement has denied that any U.S. or British special forces have entered territory under its control.

Qatar's al-Jazeera television reported earlier on Saturday that Afghan security forces had arrested three Americans from U.S. special forces and two Afghan guides who were apparently scouting around in western Afghanistan near the Iran border.

"It is totally wrong, we deny this news that they have come to our areas," Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, the Taliban defence minister, told Reuters in Kabul.

Mullah Obaidullah did not rule out the possibility that some foreign forces could be in regions held by anti-Taliban forces north of Kabul and in the rugged areas of the northeast near the border with Tajikistan. MORE

US and UK Special forces deploy in Afghanistan
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

A senior White House official has confirmed that US and UK special forces have been operating within Afghanistan.

The commandos are carrying out scouting and reconnaissance missions, but are not actively hunting for the prime suspect Osama bin Laden, the official said.

The news comes as diplomatic efforts continue, with a meeting between President George W Bush and Jordan's King Abdullah in the White House.

And in a new development in the investigation, US Attorney General John Ashcroft has released a letter, which links the hijackers of the three planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September.

Mr Ashcroft said the letter was found in a piece of luggage belonging to Mohamed Atta, 33, an Egyptian suspected of being one of the lead hijackers in the attacks.

"This letter is clear evidence linking the hijackers on three separate flights," Mr Ashcroft said.

4 Palestinians killed marking Intifada anniversary
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

JERUSALEM (AP) — Pledging to sustain their uprising against Israel, thousands of Palestinians marched Friday in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to mark the anniversary of the current round of fighting. Three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, but the bloodshed did not derail efforts to implement a truce.

A fourth Palestinian died when a bomb he was preparing exploded prematurely.

Forty-five Palestinians and six Israelis were hurt in widescale violence reminiscent of the early days of the fighting.

The two sides traded blame for the violence, but said they would go ahead with truce provisions, despite deep skepticism. The cease-fire terms were worked out earlier this week in talks between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Security commanders from both sides met Friday, and Israel said that in a first step, it would ease some of its security blockades of Palestinian towns. MORE

Algerian pilot instructed four of the hijackers
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

An Algerian pilot detained in Britain instructed four of the hijackers involved in the suicide attacks on the United States, a London court has been told.

Twenty-seven-year-old Lotfi Raissi faces extradition to the US after British police re-arrested him on an international warrant on Friday.

His detention is the latest development in the international effort against terrorism.

Six Algerians arrested in Spain on suspicion of links with Osama Bin Laden, considered by the US as the prime suspect in the attacks, are been held for further questioning by the high court in Madrid.

Spanish police say they found videos belonging to the suspects which contained images of attacks in Algeria and Chechnya and training camps in Afghanistan.

Lotfi Raissi was among four people arrested in the UK last Friday.

The FBI want to question Mr Raissi, who has been living close to London's Heathrow airport, over the 11 September attacks in which more than 6,000 people were killed.

Italy PM says Islam comment misunderstood
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

By Crispian Balmer

ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, facing a firestorm of protest after asserting that Western civilisation was superior to Islam, has said his words were taken out of context and he had not meant to give offence.

The billionaire businessman-turned-politician told reporters during a visit to Germany on Wednesday that the West should be aware of "the superiority" of its civilisation, saying it created wealth and guaranteed respect for human rights.

His comments were denounced by European Union and Muslim leaders around the world, but Berlusconi told Italy's Upper House of Parliament on Friday that he had merely wanted to stress his support for tolerance and individual liberty.

"An artificial controversy has blown up based on nothing and fed by irresponsible comments from the opposition," a combative Berlusconi said.

"I'm sorry that a few words dragged out of the general context, badly interpreted, have offended the sensibility of my Arab and Muslim friends," he added.

"I will continue to want to be sincere. If I have to be hanged on one word, isolated from its context, in exchange for the freedom of saying both what I think and what the great majority of Italians also think, then go ahead and hang me."

The Arab League demanded on Thursday that Berlusconi either deny having made the remarks or else apologise to the world's one billion Muslims.

Egypt and Lebanon also called for clarification while Western leaders expressed shock that the head of the world's sixth largest economy should have expressed his thoughts at such a delicate moment in time.
MORE

Islamabad not to join any military action
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

ISLAMABAD, Sept 26: Pakistan said on Wednesday it was part of the global coalition against terrorism but can never be part of any hostile action against Afghanistan.

"Pakistan cannot and can never join any hostile action against Afghanistan or Afghan people," Foreign Office spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan told reporters.

"We are deeply conscious that destinies of the two people and two countries are intertwined," he said, adding: "There is no joint operation or any specific operation or contingency plans (by the United States) which has been placed before Pakistan."

The spokesman said it was a fight against terrorism in which Pakistan was part of international coalition and we wanted the Afghan government to be responsive to what international community wants from it. "It is not fight against any people or any country."

Syria to join anti-terrorism campaign if...
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

Syria will only support an international campaign against terrorism if it is clearly defined and spares the lives of civilians, it has told a delegation of European Union leaders.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said it was crucial that such a mission should be within a United Nations framework and that the meaning of terrorism be clearly defined.

He was speaking after a meeting in Damascus between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a high-level delegation from the EU.

The delegation, consisting of Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten, has been touring the Middle East and South Asia trying to drum up support for the US-led coalition against terrorism. MORE

Catastrophe facing Angola
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

A report released by a British-based charity describes the humanitarian situation in Angola as catastrophic and calls on international donors to provide more support to relief efforts.

The report, issued by the humanitarian and development charity Oxfam, looks at the state of Angola, a country where decades of war continue to cause widespread hunger and homelessness.

It does not only assess the country's humanitarian situation, but looks at the causes of poverty and concludes that the Angolan Government, the Unita rebels and the international community should be doing more to put an end to the war there.

But it goes beyond this assessment to examine why such a situation prevails in a potentially wealthy country and looks at the reasons why the war continues in Angola, despite repeated peace efforts.

It declares that a military solution to the Angolan conflict is not feasible, and calls on the international community to support a peaceful solution to Angola's problems - a solution which has the full backing of Angolan society and not just the warring parties.

Angola Peace Monitor

NW Pilot Enraged Over Confiscation
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

RAPID CITY, S.D. –– A Northwest Airlines pilot became enraged after airport security confiscated his fingernail clippers and scissors, according to police and airport officials who witnessed the incident.

Police intervened, and the incident was being reported to the Federal Aviation Administration.

But no charges were filed against the pilot, whom Northwest declined to identify Thursday. The flight to Minneapolis left Rapid City Regional Airport on schedule Wednesday with the pilot at the controls.

Stricter security measures since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast include a ban on items that could be used as weapons. The new rules also apply to pilots and flight attendants.

"There was a lot of commotion, like he was throwing a tantrum," said Alice James of Rapid City, who said she witnessed the incident as she was dropping off her daughter and grandson. MORE

In Hijacker's Bags, a Call to Planning, Prayer and Death
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2001

( Washington Post ) Mohamed Atta, one of the key organizers among the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, left behind a five-page handwritten document in Arabic that includes Islamic prayers, instructions for a last night of life and practical reminders to bring "knives, your will, IDs, your passport" and, finally, "to make sure that nobody is following you."

FBI investigators, who found the writings in Atta's luggage, which did not make it onto his flight, are not sure of the author's identity -- whether it was Atta, another hijacker or someone else.

The document is a cross between a chilling spiritual exhortation aimed at the hijackers and an operational mission checklist. With the hijackers all dead, the pages may turn out to provide the most vivid and penetrating glimpse into their mental states and final hours before they embarked on the deadliest act of terrorism in U.S. history. MORE

UN on humanitarian situation in Afghanistan
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

UN Security Council voices concern at worsening humanitarian situation in Afghanistan

September 27, 2001 – Security Council members today expressed deep concern at the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and said the world community was "ready and determined" to lend the country and its neighbours desperately needed help.

"The tragedy of the Afghan people has deep roots, more than two decades of conflict and three years of drought, but the fast deteriorating situation today was basically the result of decisions taken by the Taliban," said Ambassador Jean-David Levitte of France, which this month holds the rotating presidency of the 15-member UN body.

"Members of the Council called on the Taliban immediately to remove all restrictions on the supply of desperately needed humanitarian aid, including those on food supplies and humanitarian relief workers," Ambassador Levitte said. "These restrictions have one result: the humanitarian assistance cannot be provided inside the country. The Taliban will be held responsible for the consequences of their own decision."

Council members said that the international community stood "ready and determined" to respond urgently and generously to the repeated calls by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UN agencies for assistance for the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries. The statement recognized "the particular pressures" of potential refugee flows on Afghanistan's neighbours, especially Pakistan and Iran, and said specific help for those countries was needed.

Ambassador Levitte said that in addition to Mr. Annan's briefing on different aspects of the current situation in and around Afghanistan, Council Members also discussed the political situation. They reaffirmed the relevant resolutions on Afghanistan, particularly the ones calling for the Taliban to turn over Usama bin Laden, and welcomed the recent commitment by countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and especially Pakistan.

Earliest presence of humans in east Asia
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

By BBC News Online's Helen Briggs
Stone tools dated to 1.36 million years ago provide the earliest evidence yet of human occupation of northeast Asia.

The tools, which were found at an ancient settlement in northern China, show that early humans were able to adapt to extremes of temperature relatively early in their history.

The crude implements were likely to have been made by early humans known as Homo erectus, a predecessor to our own species, Homo sapiens.

According to many scientists, Homo erectus was the first early human to move out of Africa to populate Asia and Europe.

The tools were found as far as 40 degrees north - at Xiaochangliang in the Nihewan Basin, north China.

This comes as a surprise because the area was thought to be inhospitable to early humans of the time, which were used to warmer climes. It suggests that early humans emerged from the tropics with an inbuilt ability to adapt to their environment. MORE

Islamabad not to join any military action
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

ISLAMABAD, Sept 26: Pakistan said on Wednesday it was part of the global coalition against terrorism but can never be part of any hostile action against Afghanistan.

"Pakistan cannot and can never join any hostile action against Afghanistan or Afghan people," Foreign Office spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan told reporters.

"We are deeply conscious that destinies of the two people and two countries are intertwined," he said, adding: "There is no joint operation or any specific operation or contingency plans (by the United States) which has been placed before Pakistan."

The spokesman said it was a fight against terrorism in which Pakistan was part of international coalition and we wanted the Afghan government to be responsive to what international community wants from it. "It is not fight against any people or any country."

The spokesman said Pakistan had not asked the militia to close down its embassy in Islamabad. The spokesman regretted the torching of US embassy in Kabul by an angry mob, saying "such acts are not in keeping with the diplomatic norms."

Part of the abandoned American embassy was gutted in anti-US demonstrations in the Afghanistan capital on Wednesday.

In response to a question, he said there was no confirmation of the reports that Indian forces had landed in Uzebkistan. He said the US defence delegation was still in Pakistan and was holding talks with its counterparts.

To a question, he said the Afghan embassy in Pakistan was not being asked to close down.

The spokesman said Pakistan had no information on the current whereabouts of Osama bin Laden or members of his al-Qaeda network. He said Pakistan has received no information about Osama since the Taliban claimed he had disappeared on Sunday. "We do not have any information about Osama bin Laden or about leaders of al-Qaeda," he said.

The spokesman admitted that hundreds of people could be entering into Pakistan illegally from Afghanistan across the porous, often unguarded border, but he dismissed suggestions that Osama and his associates could be hiding on Pakistani territory. "I do not think that they will be confident of finding safe haven in Pakistan," he said. –Agencies

Algerian Islamic rebels kill wedding guests
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

LARBAA, Algeria (Reuters) - Suspected Algerian Islamic rebels wearing military fatigues stormed an isolated town and shot and knifed to death 22 people, nine of them at a wedding, witnesses and residents have said.

The bride and groom escaped unhurt, the groom because he was late for the wedding. Victims included a two-month-old baby girl and a four-year-old girl whose throats were slit.

The raids on Wednesday night in the small town of Larbaa, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Algiers, were the latest in a bloody insurgency which has pitted Islamic guerrillas against the military-backed government since 1992.

The official news agency APS confirmed the death toll of 22 in two attacks in Larbaa, quoting security forces. MORE

Spinach Protein Could Offer New Hope For The Blind
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (http://www.ornl.gov/)

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Sept. 26, 2001 – Spinach, touted in the Popeye cartoon for its ability to strengthen the body, may prove even more valuable for restoring vision to people who are legally blind.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Southern California hope to learn whether a protein from spinach could replace a non-functioning light receptor in the eye. People who suffer from age-related macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, diseases that are leading causes of blindness worldwide, may find hope in this research.

"Although the neural wiring from the eye to brain is intact in people with these diseases, their eyes lack photoreceptor activity," said Eli Greenbaum of ORNL’s Chemical Technology Division.

Greenbaum and colleagues propose replacing these non-functioning photoreceptors with a spinach protein that gives off a small electrical voltage after capturing the energy of incoming photons. The main function of Photosystem I, a photosynthetic reaction center protein, is to perform photosynthesis in leaves using the energy of the sun to make plant tissue.

Greenbaum’s collaborator is Mark Humayun, a professor in the University of Southern California’s Doheny Eye Institute. Humayun and his research team showed that if retinal tissue is stimulated electrically using pinhead-sized electrodes implanted in the eyes of legally blind patients, many can see image patterns that mimic the effects of stimulation by light.

Greenbaum believes that it might be possible to use Photosystem I protein to restore photoreceptor activity. Experiments by Greenbaum’s team showed that Photosystem I protein can capture photon energy and generate electric voltages of up to 1 volt.

"What we need to find out is whether these voltages can trigger neural events and allow the brain to interpret the images," Greenbaum said.

In recent research, the team showed that Photosystem I reaction centers protein could be incorporated into the membrane of an artificial liposome, a tiny spherical particle formed by a fatty (lipid) membrane enclosing a watery compartment. The artificial membrane mimics that of a living cell.

Greenbaum’s team also showed that the Photosystem I reaction centers can work inside a liposome, which means it produces the experimental equivalent of a voltage when it comes into contact with light. A liposome will likely be used to deliver Photosystem I reaction centers protein to a retinal cell.

In the United States, degeneration of the retina has left 20,000 people blind and 500,000 people visually impaired. Retinitis pigmentosa is an inherited condition of the retina in which specific photoreceptor cells, called rods, degenerate. The loss of function of these rod cells diminishes a person’s ability to see in dim light and gradually can reduce peripheral vision.

Age-related macular degeneration is a disease that affects the center of vision. It rarely leads to blindness but people with the disease have difficulty reading, driving and performing other activities that require fine, sharp straight-ahead vision. The disease affects the macula, the center of the retina.

The project also builds upon work using the technique of Kelvin force microscopy, in which Greenbaum and colleagues performed the first measurements of voltages induced by photons of light from single photosynthetic reaction centers. The work was published in 2000 in an issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Other ORNL researchers involved in the project are Tanya Kuritz and James Lee of the Chemical Technology Division, Frank Larimer of the Life Sciences Division, and Ida Lee and Barry Bruce of the University of Tennessee.

"We have assembled an outstanding interdisciplinary team of scientists, vitreo-retinal surgeons, ophthalmologists and biomedical engineers to attack this important problem," Greenbaum said.

Greenbaum has long envisioned that his group’s research in photosynthesis could have an impact on people in terms of energy production and biomolecular electronics. Now, he’s especially excited that it could also restore vision to some blind people.

This research is funded by ORNL’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program, which is provided by DOE. ORNL is a multiprogram research facility managed by UT-Battelle.

Nervous Muslims in Europe
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

Muslims in Europe have also found themselves the focus of unwelcome attention since the attacks in the US. Muslim communities in many European countries have joined the world in condemning the terrorist attacks. The Muslim Council of Britain, for instance, said those responsible "stand outside the pale of civilized values".

Germany has one of the largest Muslim communities in Europe. The chairman of Germany's Central Council of Muslims, Nadeem Elyas, says his group also experienced threats during the Gulf War, but that things are worse now. He says he has received e-mails, phone calls and faxes with serious threats of murder and bombing.

British Muslims are also nervous and angry about harassment and threats after the U.S. terror attacks. Mosques in Birmingham have received abusive phone calls and Muslim residents of the city say they have been harassed in their homes. The Islamia School in West London was forced to close after the attacks after a series of telephone death threats. The school was founded by pop singer Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam.

In France, sympathy for the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington has been strong. But French politicians also worry about provoking a backlash within the country's large Muslim community. "In France, we must remain very attentive to the safety of our citizens," says Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. And he stresses the Western world is "not at war against Islam or the Arab and Muslim world".

Saddam says condolences would be hypocrisy
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein says he would be a hypocrite if he sent condolences to the United States over the September 11 suicide attacks on Washington and New York.

"(U.S. President George) Bush wants us to condole with him," Iraqi television quoted Saddam as telling a visiting envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"If I had done so, then I would not have respected my people...as Bush is the president of a state which launches war on us and bombs us in a despicable terrorist way," he said.

A U.S.-led coalition bombed Iraq heavily during the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqi targets still come under attack by Western planes policing two "no-fly" zones in the north and south of the country.

"This would be a hypocrisy if I had send condolences to its president and we are not hypocrites," he said.

Iraq has not publicly condemned the devastating attacks, but Saddam's senior aide, Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, sent letters of condolences to a U.S. group opposed to sanctions on Iraq, and to former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark who Saddam said had come "to console us for the calamities afflicted by America on us".

Saddam said the U.S. had failed to produce evidence to back its claims about those responsible for the suicide attacks. MORE

German trains crash head-on
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

( BBC ) Two passenger trains have collided near the town of Lindau in southern Germany, injuring 82 people, nine of them seriously.

There are no reports of fatalities, but many school children were among the passengers and some of those injured are as young as 10.

First reports indicate that human error is to blame for the crash, a German railways spokesman has been quoted as saying.

The train travelling from Lindau should have waited for the second train, travelling in the opposite direction from Friedrichshafen, to arrive before it pulled out of Enzisweiler station.

The two regional Deutsche Bahn trains collided at 0730 local time (0530 GMT).

They were travelling on a single-track line linking Lindau - a town on Lake Constance on the border with Switzerland - with nearby Friedrichshafen. MORE

Gunman kills 14 in Swiss assembly
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

A gunman has gone on the rampage in a regional parliament in Switzerland, killing at least 14 people.
Several others are said to have been injured by the man, who was disguised as a policeman, when he opened fire during a session of the assembly.

The incident took place at the regional parliament building in the canton of Zug in central Switzerland, 25 km (16 miles) south of Zurich, at 1030 (0830GMT) on Thursday morning.

Police say the man also detonated an explosive device. A spokesman said any link with the recent attacks in the United States had been categorically ruled out.

Peter Hess, the president of the House of Representatives in the Swiss national parliament, confirmed that 14 people had died.

Mr Hess said that three members of the local government were among the victims.

The Swiss news agency ATS reported that "there was blood everywhere", with casualties lying on the floor and small fires in the assembly hall. Swiss Government

Nigerian school collapse kills pupils
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

The mud-walled Islamiya school in Kano's ancient Kofar Naisa district was weakened after heavy rains overnight, according to local police.

Much of the normally arid northern Nigeria has been devastated by floods this year, killing hundreds and leaving 30,000 homeless.

Witnesses told Reuters news agency that 10 of the dead were girls between five and 10-years-old.

"The building apparently cracked during the rainfall and it collapsed today," Kano State Police Commissioner Yakubu Bello Uba told Reuters. "Eleven of the pupils were killed instantly and seven were rushed to hospital."

In August hail containing lumps of ice, said to be the size of footballs and weighing up to two kilos, destroyed over 1,000 hectares of crops which were about to be harvested.

Kano is northern Nigeria's most populous state and has been an Islamic centre for many centuries.

Two years ago it was the scene of ethnic clashes between local Hausa-speakers and Yorubas from south-western Nigeria which left over 70 people dead. http://odili.net/nigeria.html

Iran Refuses disgusting Americans
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2001

TEHRAN - Iran's supreme leader ruled out Iranian help for any U.S.-led attack on neighboring Afghanistan, saying yesterday that the United States was not "competent" to lead a global campaign, and calling American behavior "disgusting."
In a state-run television address to the nation, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the U.S. administration was "over-expectant" in wanting the whole world to help following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"Iran will not participate in any move under U.S. leadership. Iran will not extend any assistance to the U.S. and its allies in attacking the already suffering Muslim neighboring Afghanistan," Khamenei said.

America's behavior, by expecting help but not earning the respect of other nations, was "disgusting," Khamenei said, adding that Iran did not consider the United States "competent and sincere [enough] to lead any global campaign against terrorism."

Iran considers the United States its biggest enemy, but a strong reform movement in the government favors warming ties with the West. Washington has put Iran on a list of nations supporting terrorism.

During the past few days, Iran expressed its opposition to unilateral retaliatory U.S. military strikes against the Taliban, who harbor Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the terrorist atrocities. Iran has called for an international anti-terror coalition led by the United Nations - not Washington.

In his speech, Khamenei, the leader of anti-reform hard-liners, also rejected America's declaration to the world that nations had to choose between being "with us or terrorism."

"We are not with you," he said. "At the same time, we are not with terrorists."

The United States wants Mideast support - from use of military installations or airspace to intelligence - as it builds forces for an expected assault on bin Laden's operations in Afghanistan.

In another regional rebuff yesterday, Saudi Arabia said it won't let the United States use its bases to strike Afghanistan, saying Turkey and the former Soviet republics would better serve America.

Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, said his country, the birthplace of Islam, could not be involved in any "carpet-bombing" of Muslims in Afghanistan.

Scientists Discover How Some Viruses Take Strong Hold Of Cells
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Source: Brookhaven National Laboratory (http://www.bnl.gov/)

UPTON, NY -- As part of an ongoing effort to understand how viruses infect cells, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have deciphered the molecular-level interaction between coxsackievirus -- which infects the heart, brain, pancreas, and other organs -- and the human cell protein to which it attaches.
This work, published in the October issue of Nature Structural Biology, may lead to improved ways to thwart viral infections, and may help scientists design virus-based vehicles for gene therapy.

The study reveals that the receptor protein for coxsackievirus (known as coxsackievirus-adenovirus receptor, or CAR) forms pairs on the surface of human cells, with two adjacent CAR receptors attached to one another below the surface of the cell membrane. When coxsackievirus binds to the human cell, it forms bonds with both receptors of the pair.

"This arrangement is advantageous for the virus," says Brookhaven biologist Paul Freimuth, one of the study's authors. "The binding becomes almost irreversible, because both bonds would have to reverse simultaneously to release the virus. That increases the likelihood that the virus will infect the cell."

The structural studies also reveal that the binding sites on the coxsackievirus are "cleverly" hidden from the body's immune system, which produces antibodies to fight infections. "If you think of the virus as a golf ball, the binding sites that recognize the receptor are inside the dimples," Freimuth says. "Antibodies can't fit into the indentations, but the receptor is a slender molecule that can fit in."

Both of these features -- hidden binding sites and simultaneous binding to multiple receptors -- are shared by other viruses in the same family, including the virus that causes polio and rhinovirus, one cause of the common cold and other respiratory and gastrointestinal infections.

"It's a very clever arrangement that these viruses have worked out," Freimuth says, "and very hard to defeat." For example, scientists have tried administering single receptor-like molecules designed to tie up binding sites on a virus and block its ability to attach to cells. These haven't worked very well, Freimuth suggests, because the double hold the virus forms with the cell makes it hard for these single molecules to compete. But perhaps administering receptor-like molecules with double binding sites would be able to compete and interfere with the virus' attack.

The current work may also help scientists interested in developing viruses used in gene therapy. The idea behind gene therapy is to destroy a virus’ disease-causing genes and replace them with therapeutic genes -- ones that might fix a genetic defect that causes cancer or some other disease.

Being able to tailor-make viruses that bind to specific receptors could help deliver the genes to cells where they are needed without affecting other cells. And the knowledge that multiple binding sites help viruses gain a strong hold could help scientists to make these designer viruses more effective delivery vehicles. Tailor-made viruses may also offer insight into studies of systems biology -- for example, how added genes affect behavior see: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/bnlpr090501.htm.

The structural details reported in the current study were derived by cryo-electron microscopy -- the analysis of frozen samples of the virus bound to partial and full receptor molecules. This part of the study was performed at Purdue University. Cloning and sequencing the receptor gene and producing the receptor protein were all performed at Brookhaven Lab.

The data were also correlated with a previous study of a portion of the CAR protein bound to adenovirus, performed at Brookhaven’s National Synchrotron Light Source and published by Freimuth and others in 1999 see: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/bnlpr111899.html.

Brookhaven Lab just received $750 thousand from the U.S. Department of Energy to purchase its own cryo-electron microscope, so that this kind of complementary approach to the study of biological molecules can now take place entirely at the Lab.

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Keck Foundation, Purdue University, and the U.S. Department of Energy, which supports basic research in a variety of scientific fields.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies. Brookhaven also builds and operates major facilities available to university, industrial, and government scientists.

The Laboratory is managed by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited liability company founded by Stony Brook University and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization.

Anti-terrorism proposals worry civil libertarians
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Advocacy groups, legal experts and some members of Congress are voicing strong concerns that a proposal to expand law enforcement powers in order to ratchet up the fight on terrorism could end up treading on civil liberties enjoyed by all Americans.

The Bush administration's anti-terrorism package, which was the subject of hearings in the House and Senate on Monday and Tuesday, has drawn controversy because of provisions critics say affect a variety of privacy and individual rights. They include the detention and deportation of immigrants, the expansion of the government's wiretapping authority, and the easing of grand jury secrecy laws, among other measures.

David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said a basic problem with the package is that it is too sweeping. "It is not in any way carefully calibrated to the threat that we are facing," said Cole, an expert in constitutional law.

Cole said he is most troubled by proposals affecting immigrants, which could lead to the deportation of law-abiding, peaceful non-citizens merely because of "guilt by association." And, he said, the proposals give the attorney general the power to place immigrants in detention merely because of suspicion, without any evidence against them.

A variety of other areas of concern has been cited. Privacy groups have said the package of proposals increases the government's power to monitor online communications, for example. They also fear that provisions ensuring the secrecy of information uncovered in grand jury proceedings -- meant to protect innocent individuals from the release of embarrassing information -- would be loosened. Another concern is that existing restrictions on searches would be eased, not just for terrorists, but for all criminal investigations.

In testimony before Congress and in public statements, the American Civil Liberties Union has spoken out over provisions in three broad areas. They include the provisions affecting immigrants, the changes to surveillance and wiretapping powers, and several other criminal justice measures -- such as the expansion of the government's authority to request secret searches.

ACLU President Nadine Strossen said in an interview that both liberals and conservatives have expressed concern for the preservation of civil liberties, giving her some reason to believe changes will be made to those provisions in the package.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that when Congress takes a closer took at these provisions … they will not be passed, or not in the form that they were proposed," she said.

Many groups and experts have asked that lawmakers take time to fully study the implications of the series of proposals, partly out of concern they could get caught up in the strong national desire to act swiftly and strongly in the aftermath of the attacks.

Indeed, legislators showed a desire to tap on the brakes this week, with the House Judiciary Committee postponing action on the bill scheduled for Tuesday.

At Monday's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, told Ashcroft that both Democrats and Republicans want to move forward quickly with legislation to help in the battle against terrorism.

But, he added, "There are a number of provisions in your measure that give us constitutional trouble."

Brian Forst, a professor of justice, law and society at American University, said many of the provisions in the package would, indeed, give the government more powerful tools to fight terrorism. But the potential for misusing those tools should give lawmakers pause, he said.

"On the one hand, you can see that it could do a lot to help, and on the other hand you can also see how it can be abused," said Forst. He noted the abuses of the McCarthy era, or the government's surveillance of civil rights leaders during the 1960s as lessons that should not be forgotten.

"It all depends on how it's managed," he said. "We have reason to be concerned because of the problems there have been in the past." MORE

Iran won't help U.S.-led alliance
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says his country will provide no help to the United States in any attack on Afghanistan after Washington accused his country of practising terrorism.

"Iran will provide no help to America and its allies...in an attack on suffering, neighbouring, Muslim Afghanistan," Khamenei told a group of war veterans and their families. Excerpts of his speech were carried on state television on Wednesday.

"We do not believe America is sincere enough to lead an international move against terrorism. America has its hands deep in blood for all the crimes committed by the Zionist regime," he added, referring to Israel.

He was speaking two days after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Iran should halt its support for what he called terrorism if it wanted to be a part of a U.S.-led coalition hunting down the perpetrators of September 11 attacks on the United States.
MORE

'D-day landings' ruled out
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

( Guardian UK ) British and American defence ministers today attempted to play down speculation on the nature of strikes against Afghanistan, saying any military action against terrorism would not begin with a "D-day landing".

The defence minister, Geoff Hoon, used the words in radio interview broadcast hours after his US counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld, cautioned against expecting a "D-day as such".

"There is a role for military force but it is important to emphasise that this is a very different kind of enemy than one that can be dealt with in terms of, say, a D-day landing," Mr Hoon said.

"This is not an enemy that is going to line up and be attacked in a conventional sense."

Mr Hoon, who is today attending a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels, also reaffirmed that "all the evidence" pointed to Osama bin Laden being responsible for the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

But he indicated that military action would spread far wider than Afghanistan, where Bin Laden is thought to be hiding.

"He undoubtedly has major training camps in Afghanistan but it's also the case that he has facilities elsewhere," he said.

The US defence secretary said earlier that the campaign against terrorism would not begin "with a significant event" or even end with one.

MPs Call for Unbiased, Legal Action against Terrorism
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

TEHRAN - Ever since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the United States has been threatening to wage a full-flung war on Afghanistan for harboring Osama Bin Laden, whom Washington accuses of masterminding the attacks. However, even if Bin Laden's complicity in the deadly attacks is proved, any U.S. military aggression on Afghanistan would surely claim the lives of many innocent Afghans.

The TEHRAN TIMES interviewed a number of Majlis deputies about the impending U.S. operations and also practical ways to counter terrorism.

The Tehran representative Golam-Ali Haddad-Adel told the daily, "Any fight against terrorism would succeed only if a united stand is adopted by the international community, and following a double standard in this regard would be counterproductive. The countries that intend to root out terrorism must be willing to fight all sorts of terrorism, including the state-sponsored terrorism besetting the Palestinian nation and also the acts of terrorism committed against the Iranian nation. Therefore, as long as there is a selective approach toward this issue, the fight against terrorism will not yield any results." MORE

Young Iranians publicly flogged for being drunk and having sex
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Six young Iranians have been flogged in public for being drunk and having sex.

Police in the south-western city of Doroud say they were given between 80 and 100 lashes each.

They were aged between 19 and 28. This is the ninth set since a campaign of public floggings began recently.

Local judicial chief Mohammad-Sadeq Akbari says it will help create a healthy society.

President Mohammad Khatami has criticised the campaign, saying "tough punishments cannot remove social corruption."

Officials with the judiciary say public flogging is part of Islamic doctrine and deter crime, the Islamic Republic News Agency reports.

Afghans torch US embassy
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Thousands of pro-Taleban demonstrators have set fire to buildings within the vacant US embassy compound in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Firefighters were attempting to bring the blaze under control, while Taleban militia fought with protesters.

The attack on the embassy compound comes as the United States contemplates military action against Afghanistan.

The embassy has been vacant since 1989, although some Afghan staff were retained for maintenance and other limited duties. It is believed they were not in the compound when it was attacked. MORE BBC

Nato 'to hear attack evidence'
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

The US is expected to present some of its evidence against Osama Bin Laden when Nato ministers meet on Wednesday.

The Brussels meeting, also attended by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, is likely to reaffirm support for American action against Bin Laden, blamed by the US for the devastating attacks.

US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is due to brief ministers about Washington's military and diplomatic drive to target those behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Nato Secretary-General George Robertson said the alliance would not take any action until it had received "definitive evidence" from the US on the suspects.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Brussels says there will probably be a formal confirmation that Nato believes the attacks were initiated from abroad and do therefore count as assaults on the entire alliance, justifying a collective response. MORE

Demonstrators torch US embassy buildings in Kabul
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Thousands of demonstrators Wednesday set fire to buildings within the compound of the vacant US embassy in Kabul amid chaotic scenes here, witnesses said.

The demonstrators, protesting possible US military action against Afghanistan, broke into the compound and set fire to some abandoned cars to create a huge blaze which spread to outbuildings but not the main embassy building.

Taliban firefighters were attempting to bring the blaze under control and Taliban soldiers were trying to bring the protestors under control.

The embassy has been vacant since before the Taliban seized Kabul in September 1996.

The demonstration was the biggest show of anti-US anger in Kabul since the current crisis started with the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Face to face with Osama
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2001

The fax rolled off the machine into the offices of Al-Jazeera Television on Sunday, and a world preparing for war paused for a moment to read it. Signed Osama bin Laden, it looked like a call to arms from the FBI's most wanted man, calling on "our beloved brothers" to "triumph over the infidel forces and the forces of tyranny, and to destroy the new Jewish-Christian crusader campaign on the soil of Pakistan and Afghanistan." Bin Laden, it seemed, was preparing for war.

We may never know if the fax came from his pen. But from my meetings and phone calls in recent years with him, I believe I have glimpsed his state of mind. It is three years ago now that the first call came to my office at The News in Peshawar, summoning me to a camp in southern Afghanistan. The Pakistani border guards would not let us cross, so the Islamist militant group who had organised the meeting smuggled us in. We waited for three days until finally, on May 25 1998, we met Bin Laden - a softly spoken man who drank copious amounts of water, because of a kidney problem, as we later discovered.

He had brought me there to announce the launch of his International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the United States and Israel - but the Taliban had not approved the announcement, and were furious. Mullah Omar angrily insisted that there could only be one ruler of Afghanistan - Bin Laden or himself. MORE

Washington's hawk trains sights on Iraq
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2001

( The Guardian ) Paul Wolfowitz's admirers and detractors agree on one thing - "hawk" is too timid a description of the outspoken deputy defence secretary trying to persuade President Bush to bomb Iraq.
"Hawk doesn't do him justice," said one awed former colleague from academia. "What about velociraptor?"

In Washington, deputy defence secretaries rarely play starring roles, but Mr Wolfowitz, due to put the US case to Nato defence ministers in Brussels today, was an exception even before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Since that disastrous morning, he has been a major player, often overshadowing his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, as the leading proponent of a wider war against suspected state sponsors of terrorism, particularly Iraq. MORE

Hawks gang up against Powell
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2001

THE political consensus over the September 11 attacks has begun to fracture in Washington with mounting criticism of Colin Powell by prominent conservative hawks.

William Kristol, a leading figure on the Right, accused the Secretary of State of undermining President Bush's war aims.

Mr Kristol, chief of staff to the former vice president Dan Quayle, wrote in the Washington Post: "Virtually every major political figure has gone out of his way to support the president. Except for his secretary of state . . . Colin Powell has revised or modified many of his boss's remarks."

The article, the first public attack on Gen Powell by a prominent Republican since the devastating assault on America, also warned Mr Bush that he could face trouble from his own party if he steers too moderate a course. MORE

Majority of hijackers spent time plotting in Britain
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2001

(AFP) - Eleven of the 19 hijackers involved in the recent devastating air strikes on the United States spent time plotting their attacks in Britain, according to The Times on Wednesday.

The paper, citing intelligence chiefs, said that five of the hijackers left London airports in June to fly to America after possibly partaking in "a vital planning meeting".

According to the broadsheet, the FBI has asked Scotland Yard to discover who sheltered and funded the team during its stay in Britain in the hope of uncovering a cell of Al Qaeda -- the organisation of Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect behind the September 11 strikes on New York and Washington.

The paper said that three hijackers were on each of the two aircraft that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and three were on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. It added that two were on the airliner that hit the Pentagon.

The 11 hijackers were joined in America after their stay in Britain by eight others, including three from a cell in Germany, MORE

NATO Beats Macedonia Arms Goal
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2001

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - NATO has surpassed its target for gathering arms from ethnic Albanian rebels as part of a peace agreement for Macedonia, the alliance's chief said Tuesday.

"The weapons are still being collected today but we can confirm that 3,381 ... have been collected and the final figure should be higher still," said NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson.

The monthlong mission, Operation Essential Harvest, is scheduled to end Wednesday. NATO said Monday that the quota of 3,300 weapons had already been met.

Robertson called the mission as a success. Without it "peace would not be within reach," he said during his one-day visit. MORE

U.S. Renames Buildup 'Operation Enduring Freedom'
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2001

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Moving to repair any damage to Muslim sensibilities, the United States on Tuesday changed the code name of its military buildup in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on America to "Operation Enduring Freedom."

The change was made after the initial name -- "Operation Infinite Justice" -- last week ran into objections from some Islamic scholars on grounds that only God, or Allah, could mete out infinite justice in their view.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters of the new name at a Pentagon briefing. He stressed this was just the designation for the current military buildup and not for the overall U.S. assault on international terrorism using economic, political and diplomatic means.

The initial name surfaced last Wednesday, not long after the Bush administration apologized for another term that could alienate Muslims it would like to include in a coalition to fight terrorism in the wake of a Sept. 11 attack on America.

Earlier last week, the White House said it regretted if President Bush's Sept. 16 call for a "crusade" against terrorism had offended anyone. That reference summoned up in the Arab world the Christian struggle from the 11th to 13th centuries to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims.

Indonesians Sign Up for Holy War in Afghanistan...
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2001

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A hardline Muslim youth group in Indonesia said on Tuesday more than 200 of its members had signed up to participate in a possible holy war against the United States in Afghanistan.
The Islamic Youth Movement (GPI), which claims to have several thousand members, said it had links with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban but did not give further details or say how it was funded.

"We officially opened the registration on Sunday and up until now we have 225 people signed up to join a holy war in Afghanistan," GPI commander Hardiansyah told Reuters.

Hardiansyah, in his late twenties, said the GPI also backed moves by other radical Muslim groups in Indonesia to round up American citizens for expulsion. MORE

Israel snubs UK Government
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2001

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is refusing to meet British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw because of Israeli anger over Mr Straw's comments on the Middle East.
Mr Straw is due in Israel later on Tuesday after landmark diplomatic talks in Iran.

Officially, Mr Sharon does "not have enough time in his schedule" to meet Mr Straw.

But many in the Israeli Government are infuriated by comments made by Mr Straw published in an Iranian newspaper.

"One of the factors that helps breeds terrorism is the anger which many people in this region feel at events over the years in Palestine, " Mr Straw said. MORE BBC

Iran's media denounce British 'meddling'
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2001

THE arrival of Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, in Teheran last night was denounced by hard-line clerics and media as yet another instance of traditional British meddling in Iran's affairs.

"Once again, the bad smell of the British," ran a headline in the hardline Jomhuri-e-Eslami newspaper. Another declared: "The British cannot be trusted."

Demonstrators outside the British Embassy yesterday were chanting "Death to America, death to Britain" before police dragged them away.

Their sentiments and those in the media reflected an old Persian proverb which says: "If something happens, it is the work of the English." MORE

US military threats dismissed
Posted: Monday, September 24, 2001

The Taleban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has dismissed US threats of military action if Afghanistan fails to hand over Osama Bin Laden.

In a statement on Monday, Mullah Omar said that Washington could not resolve the current crisis by killing either himself or Osama Bin Laden.

"If America wants terrorism to end, it should withdraw its forces from the Gulf and end its partisanship in Palestine," the statement said.

Qatar's Al-Jazeera television channel has broadcast what it says are comments by Osama Bin Laden, who has denied involvement in the attacks, urging Pakistanis to repel any American military assault.

"We incite our Muslim brothers in Pakistan to deter with all their capabilities the American crusaders from invading Pakistan and Afghanistan," Al-Jazeera quoted him as saying.

Bin Laden urges Pakistanis to defend Afghans
Posted: Monday, September 24, 2001

DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar's al-Jazeera satellite television has quoted Osama bin Laden as urging Pakistanis to fight any assault on Afghanistan by "crusader Americans".

"We incite our Muslim brothers in Pakistan to deter with all their capabilities the American crusaders from invading Pakistan and Afghanistan," the television reported him as saying in a statement.

"I assure you, dear brothers, that we are firm on the road of jihad (holy war) for the sake of God."

The statement faxed to Jazeera was typed in Arabic, signed "Osama bin Laden" in typed letters and signed in handwriting by "Osama Mohammad".

War on the defenceless is heinous and unforgivable
Posted: Monday, September 24, 2001

THE EDITOR: I watched on television with horror the destruction of the World Trade Centre building and the inherent loss of thousands of innocent lives. There can be no justification whatsoever for the slaughter of innocent people and such act every self-respecting person should condemn.

I am appealing to the President of the USA and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States of America to keep on hold military air strikes on the lives of innocent people and to not act in haste. I have learnt an investigation into last Tuesday's worst terrorists attacks to hit America is underway. I am imploring you to thoroughly investigate this heinous crime so that these perpetrators can be brought to justice.

As the number one super power in keeping world peace, Americans should try to be a fair and just people when dealing with other countries' disputes. Why are they turning a blind eye on the Muslims; for years Muslims the world over were angered and outraged as hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo were slaughtered by Christian Serbs, yet, despite this tremendous loss America did nothing. I have seen on international news Israeli helicopters and gunships rocketing Palestinian buildings and in many instances I have seen Israel military tanks firing high incendiary shells at Palestinian infrastructure. Obviously people who are injured or killed as a result of these attacks by the Israeli armed forces have forcefully occupied the Palestinian peoples territory without consent and are continuing to build houses for the Jews on said lands. Why is it these disputes cannot be settled with peace keeping forces by the Americans and return to the Palestinian people land that is rightfully theirs?

It is very disturbing to observe the assassination of the Palestinian citizenry and infrastructure by the use of militant forces whenever they retaliate, only in protecting land that is rightfully theirs. The injustices perpetrated by the declaration of war on a people with no proper form of military defense can only be described as heinous and unforgivable.

Acts of terrorism should never be condoned nor encouraged and must be condemned by all world leaders. I think they should all join in the fight to put an end to this ungodly action and to ensure something of its caliber does not re-occur. If this joint exercise is implemented, I am positive it could be guaranteed that this planet will be a much safer and happier place for us to dwell in together.

Let me express my sincere condolences to the American people and other countries in the world who suffered loss of lives from this tragedy that occurred in your country and while I reiterate that attacks on non-combatants go against the countries old Islamic traditions on warfare, we ask that Americans and indeed all western Christians open their eyes and hearts when others are suffering.

RASHEED KHAN

Civic groups in Okinawa protest against U.S. military action
Posted: Sunday, September 23, 2001

NAHA — Civic groups in Okinawa Prefecture, home to the bulk of U.S. military forces in Japan, staged a demonstration Saturday in the prefectural capital of Naha to protest against expected U.S. military action in retaliation for the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

About 100 people representing 33 civic groups marched through the city, yelling, "The U.S. should stop retaliatory war."

They also shouted, "We cannot win peace by war," and "The Self-Defense Forces should not send troops overseas."

Several foreigners, including Americans, took part in the march, distributing pamphlets in English saying they believe a retaliatory war against terrorism is a big mistake.

The groups also staged a 30-hour sit-in at a square in front of the Okinawa prefectural government building from noon Friday to protest the expected military strikes against those connected with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon which left more than 6,300 people dead or missing. (kyodo News)

Bin Laden's 'disappearance'
Posted: Sunday, September 23, 2001

The US national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, this afternoon said America would be "undeterred" by reports that the wherabouts of Osama bin Laden are unknown

Taliban authorities had been unable to locate Bin Laden for the past two days, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said today.

Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef said the Taliban chief, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had sent emissaries to inform Bin Laden of a decision on Thursday by the country's Muslim clergy that he should leave the country voluntarily at a time of his choosing.

Mr Zaeef said Taliban authorities had been searching for Bin Laden for the past two days "but he has not been traced."

The Afghan Islamic Press, a private news agency based in Islamabad, Pakistan, also reported the Taliban claim. The agency quoted Mullah Omar's spokesman Abdul Hayee as saying "guest Osama" had "gone missing" and that "efforts were being made to locate him". Quoting Mr Hayee, the agency said that once Bin Laden was found, he would be told of the clerical decision. "Then it would be his decision whether he wants to stay in Afghanistan or not," the agency said.

Saddam Hussein Criticizes Bush Over Choosing-Sides Remark
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2001

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein criticized President Bush on Saturday for telling nations to choose sides in the coming war against terrorism - saying it was a choice that Iraq has never demanded countries make.
When Iraqis were killed, "we did not ask the world to be either with us or with the terror, as America is doing," the Iraqi leader told his Cabinet, in remarks carried on state TV.

"Instead, we thanked those who sympathized with us, without regarding those who failed to do so as our enemies," he said.

Bush told Congress Thursday that nations of the world must decide whether they are with the United States or with the terrorists.

Hussein accused the U.S. leader of "treating terrorism with terrorism."

It was his fourth remark about the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In his first, an open letter to the West, the leader said Americans should learn through their current pain about the suffering they've inflicted on others, particularly Iraqis and Palestinians.
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA91VRVXRC.html

Saudis balk at letting U.S. use key facility
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2001

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is resisting a U.S. request to use a new command center on a Saudi military base in any air campaign stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The Post, quoting unidentified U.S. defense officials, said Saudi resistance to use of the Prince Sultan Air Base has forced U.S. military planners to consider moving the operations center to another, unspecified country, which could delay air strikes for weeks.

But a U.S. State Department spokesman said on Saturday the United States was happy with Saudi Arabia's military cooperation.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/010922/64/159ar.html

Cracks in America's Anti-terrorist front
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2001

The Italian minister does not believe that one person - Osama bin Laden - could have organized the attack on America. He openly declared, that such statements by Americans are incorrect.

Italy and Germany declared, that they are not going to participate in the war planned by USA against Afghanistan. Defense Minister of Italy, Antonio Martino declared, that focus is not on conflict between the states and consequently Italian armies will not be sent anywhere. It informs western agencies, "in this case the term "war" is unacceptable, therefore participation of Italian armies in the action of punishment for USA is categorically excluded," - minister in interview told Italian TV.

Antonio Marino also declared that any military action by the USA should be undertaken after precisely establishing who were the organizers of the attacks, and only then it will be possible to speak about any cooperation on the part of Italy. The Italian minister doubted that one person - Osama bin Laden - could organize all this. He openly declared, that he counts such statements of Americans to be incorrect.

Minister of Defense of Italy also has called USA not to operate independently. USA should create a coalition and receive the consent of United Nations.

Germany is also excluded from unconditional participation in the operation planned by USA. As Defense Minister of Germany, Rudolf Scharping stated in an interview with Welt Am Sonntag, "the decision on the participation of the German army in military actions of NATO will be accepted in this week. It will be possible to speak about forms and size of German assistance only after results of investigations become known.

Meanwhile many western experts declare, that possible attacks over Afghanistan will result in long guerrilla war. The former assistant to the commander-in-chief of Allied armed forces of the NATO in Europe, general Gerd Shmyukle declared, that such a war in Afghanistan could last for years. He noted, that there are ideal conditions for maneuvering with Talibans in the Afghani Mountains; therefore it would be difficult to strike terrorists from the air. Besides declared Shmyukle, it is very difficult to wage war by jumping-off place over six thousand kilometers. The former chief of academy of command structure of Bundeswehr rear admiral Rudolf Lange also expressed doubts in success of anti-guerrilla war, which cannot be won with the application of usual overland forces.

Not the end of the world, just more of the same
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2001

( Justin Podur ) It was the thought that the US was being led into a trap that was the most frightening. The thought that the terrorists were working a coordinated strategy. That they had more and worse terror attacks up their sleeve. That they were anticipating the US reaction, that they had more in store, that they were calculating popular Islamist revolts would occur in Muslim countries when the US attacked. The US attacks would be followed by massive Islamic revolts and further terror attacks, to be followed by escalated US attacks, until Naomi Klein wrote about the 'end of video game wars', observing that North America finally understood what bombing really meant and that the game was over.

But now it looks like the end of the world isn't at hand, and the video game wars aren't over. Hearing Bush's speech how could one not remember the ultimatum given to Yugoslavia in 1999? How could one fail to recall how the demands made-- for full access to the whole country for the US, to turn over everyone the US asks for, and everything unconditionally-- were made so that they could not be met? How could one fail to see how everything was being set for bombing? Hearing about the Taleban's offer to invite bin Laden to leave voluntarily being taken not as a first step in a diplomatic solution but instead being categorically rejected, how could one not recall the rejection of a diplomatic solution to the Iraqi crisis ten years ago? How could one fail to see how everything was being set for bombing?

And bombing it is going to be. Because as Tamim Ansary wrote in his article, Bush exhibited plenty of 'belly' for the deaths of innocent Afghanis in his speech, but very little 'belly' for American deaths. It will be bombing, of a country of 25 million of which 5.5 million were being fed by external food programs that are now over, of which 4 million are refugees in countries to which escape routes are now sealed, in which 20 people per day are blown up by the detonation of one of 10 million landmines, in which 2 million are disabled by 20 years of war. It will be bombing that is going to be blamed on the Taliban who will hide in their bunkers while Afghanis are slaughtered. The Taleban's misogyny and intolerant version of Islam will be trotted out as a justification for slaughtering their victims.

And if history is any indication, after a long and destructive period of bombing, there will be some quiet diplomatic compromise with the Taleban that removes the items in the ultimatum that the Taleban couldn't agree to in the first place, the same kind of compromise as the final agreement with Yugoslavia. After this will follow sanctions against Afghanistan and perhaps some sort of inspections regime, this time with inspectors who look for 'terrorist camps' instead of 'nuclear chemical and biological weapons' as they do in Iraq. In this sanctions and inspections regime, the population will be held hostage and will, like the Iraqi population, be threatened with starvation at the merest threat of noncompliance by the Taleban with the inspections regime.

Maybe there won't be another terrorist attack in the US for several years. Maybe General Musharraf in Pakistan won't be ousted by inflamed militants. Maybe India's moving against Pakistani positions in Kashmir, reported in today's 'Dawn', won't escalate the situation to more dangerous levels. Muslims are already living under horrendous dictatorships. It's no easy thing to rise up and overthrow a regime, no matter how horrendous, after all.

Michael Albert wrote an essay back during the Gulf War about something he calls 'the Killing Train'. This train would carry all the corpses generated by the quick violence of video-game style bombings, terrorist bombings, and the slow violence of starvation, preventable diseases, environmental poisonings, civil wars, low-intensity wars. It would stretch from coast to coast to coast to coast and on and on, there is so much unnecessary death going on in the world.

For a moment there was a risk-- and maybe there still is-- that it was all going to come to a quick end in a giant war. It seemed possible that Bush and the gang might, even out of narrow self-interest, have to try out options other than video-game wars and mass murder of civilian populations in order to pressure the regimes that oppress those populations. It felt like social movements were in a race, one we didn't have the capacity or the power to win, to prevent a course of events that would threaten human survival. Now it looks like the killing train will just keep chugging along, and movements have to fight not against the end of the world, but against more of the same.

Pakistan won't cut ties with Taliban
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2001

Pakistan has no plans to follow the United Arab Emirates by cutting off its diplomatic ties with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, the Foreign Ministry has said.

Spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said Islamabad, which plays host to the Taliban's sole embassy abroad, played a key role in communicating between Kabul and the rest of the world in a way that the UAE and Saudi Arabia -- the only other country with ties to Kabul -- did not.

The UAE cut its relations with Kabul on Saturday after unsuccessfully trying to persuade the hardline Islamic government to hand over the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, the official news agency WAM reported.

"We have representatives of the Taliban government in Islamabad," Khan told Reuters. "It's a window for these people to the rest of the world.

UK arrests over US terror attacks
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2001

Three men and a woman have been arrested in Britain in connection with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
A man, 27, and a woman, 25, were arrested at a residential address in west London by anti-terrorist branch officers under the Terrorism Act 2000.

A second man, 29, was arrested at a separate address also in west London, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said.

A third man was arrested later in Birmingham, also by anti-terrorist officers.

All four are being questioned at central London police stations, said the spokesman.

Pakistan protests turn violent
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2001

Four people have died and several others have been injured in the Pakistani city of Karachi as pro-Taleban protests there turned violent.
They are the first deaths after days of protests against the Pakistan Government's decision to back the United States in its campaign against Afghanistan.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country in what correspondents describe as the largest such gatherings in recent days.

But correspondents say most of the protesters appear to be supporters of religious parties who have called the nationwide strike.

Three people were shot dead in Karachi during violent demonstrators in areas dominated by Afghans.

Police used tear gas to break up several rallies as the demonstrators hurled stones and attacked shops and business establishments.

A shopkeeper was lynched to death when he tried to defy the strike call and open his shop.

Religious leaders addressed the massive crowds

In Peshawar, which borders Afghanistan, angry protesters gathered before and after Friday prayers to hear religious leaders make speeches in support of the Taleban and Osama Bin Laden.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pledged to co-operate with Washington in trying to capture Bin Laden, who it says was behind last week's attacks in New York and Washington.

Speakers at the rallies attacked US President George W Bush's use of the word "crusade" to describe his planned war on terrorism.

"If America wants a crusade, then we are ready for a holy war," said one preacher.

In the capital Islamabad, a cleric at the Lal Masjid mosque warned President Musharraf against co-operating with the US.

"Musharraf, listen: The nation will not accept your decision, and any collaboration with the United States is treason," he said.

"The government's hasty decision doesn't enjoy support of the people," said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's main religious party. MORE

Arab- and Muslim-Americans, bracing for the worst
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2001

Arab- and Muslim-Americans, bracing for the worst after the World Trade Center attack, mobilize their communities while appealing to the fair-minded America for tolerance and restraint

"Sand niggers go home!" spewed one. "Bastards of Islam shall die!" declared another. Within just hours of the 11 September plane crashes into the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the Internet was rife with postings of hate directed against Arabs and Muslims. Bias attacks quickly followed suit.

On 12 September in Bridgeview, Illinois, police stopped 300 marchers chanting "USA! USA!" as they tried to approach a mosque in this Chicago suburb. A 19-year-old marcher told the Associated Press, "I’m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have." MORE

Pakistan, the Taliban and the US
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2001

( thenation.com ) Pakistan's military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, has pledged full cooperation with the United States against terrorism, but Pakistan will need to carry out a U-turn in its policy of support for the Taliban if it is to regain the West's confidence and end its present diplomatic isolation. The stark policy choices the military faces may also require a complete turnaround from twenty years of clandestine support to jihadi parties and the growth of a jihadi culture, which has sustained its policies in Kashmir and Central Asia.

After having spent the past seven years providing every conceivable form of military, political and financial support to the Taliban, Pakistan is now essentially being asked by Washington to help the US bomb the Taliban leadership, along with their guest Osama bin Laden, and topple the Taliban regime.

In an immediate follow-up to Musharraf's rhetorical pledge to assist the United States in countering international terrorism, President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell asked Pakistan to take concrete measures to prove its sincerity. MORE

Indonesian students burn flag, calling US terrorists
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2001

Scores of Muslim students have protested and burnt an American flag near the consulate in Indonesia's second-largest city, Surabaya, warning the U-S not to carry out revenge strikes on Afghanistan.

Riot police were called in to stop the group of around 40 students from entering the consulate in the East Java capital.

The protest comes amid growing threats by hardline Islamic groups in the world's largest Muslim nation to launch a holy war against the United States.

Earlier today, in Jakarta, about 200 Muslim women - wearing veils and carrying red roses - prayed near the capital's bustling main thoroughfare in a peaceful rally to condemn last week's attacks.

On Wednesday Bush vowed financial assistance to Indonesia and lifted an embargo on sales of nonlethal military items to the Southeast Asian nation.

After a meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, which focused heavily on last week's attacks on Washington and New York, Bush vowed at least $130 million in assistance and $400 million from U.S. trade finance agencies.

He said he supports Megawati's planned economic reforms, including privatisation of banks, and announced a $US400 million ($A807.59 million) economic development initiative by the Export/Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the US Trade and Development Agency.

In a statement issued after the meeting, Megawati, whose country has the world's largest Muslim population, condemned last week's attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as "barbaric and indiscriminate acts."

Megawati also pledged to cooperate with the international community in combating terrorism. "She underscored that terrorism also increasingly threatens Indonesia's democracy and national security," the statement said.

"We share this moment of grief with you," she said. Bush, in the midst of rallying world support for an anti-terrorism campaign, met in the Oval Office with Megawati today, the first leader from a Muslim state since last week's deadly twin terrorist attacks.
He had been expected to press Megawati to crack down on Islamic hardliners within Indonesia, but Megawati did not say she promised that.

"Indonesia has always been against violence," Megawati said. "Anything that relates to violence, including acts of terrorism, we will definitely be against it."

She sought to temper her vice president's statement that the terrorist hijackings in which thousands of people perished "will cleanse the sins of the United States", saying her official comment, and her letter to Bush decrying the "very inhumane" attacks, was the official Indonesian government position.

Bush told Megawati her condemnations "meant a lot to us", and rejected the notion that the anti-terrorism campaign he is organising would also be anti-Muslim in tone.

"The war against terrorism is not against Muslims, nor is it a war against Arabs," Bush said. "It's a war against evil people who conduct crimes against innocent people."

The two leaders issued two statements, one specifically addressing terrorism and the other dealing with issues ranging from the situation in East Timor, civil conflicts in Aceh and Irian Jaya and reform of Indonesia's judicial system.

Bush said he would ask Congress to provide $US130 million ($A262.47 million) in assistance for Indonesia in fiscal 2002, mainly to help with the judicial overhaul, and $US10 million ($A20.19 million) for police training.

http://www.abc.net.au/ra/newsdaily/s371710.htm

Taliban defy Bush ultimatum
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2001

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers today continued to voice defiance in the face of a grim warning from the US president, George Bush, that the "hour is coming" for America to strike.

The Taliban's ambassador in Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, insisted that his country would not hand over Osama bin Laden - America's "prime suspect" for last week's attacks.

He told a news conference in the capital, Islamabad: "Our position on this is that if America has proof, we are ready for the trial of Osama bin Laden in light of the evidence."

Asked if he was ready to hand Bin Laden over, he snapped: "No."

Earlier, Bush had delivered a speech to the US Congress setting America on a war footing and warning the Afghan regime of the consequences if it failed to comply with its demands.

In a speech punctuated by frequent bursts of applause, he said: "Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done."

Mr Blair also received a standing ovation after Mr Bush said that America had "no truer friend" than Britain.

The prime minister, who was today on his way back to Europe for an emergency summit of EU leaders in Brussels, had earlier made clear that there was now no alternative to military action.

He also indicated that British forces would almost certainly take part in any strikes initiated by America against the Taliban and Bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.

Code Name Infinite Justice 'Offends Moslems'
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2001

THE code name for the U.S. response to last week's atrocities - Operation Infinite Justice - is likely to be changed to avoid offending Moslems, it emerged yesterday.

American defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was told at a Press briefing that several Islamic scholars objected to the name on the grounds that, in their view, only God, or Allah, can mete out infinite justice.

'I understand. I understand,' Mr Rumsfeld replied. 'And obviously, the United States does not want to do or say things that create an impression on the part of the listener that would be a misunderstanding - and clearly that would be.' It is the second time in a week that language has been used by U.S. officials which some Moslems might find offensive.

The White House has said it regretted if President Bush's calling for a 'crusade' against terrorism had offended anyone.

Yesterday Mr Rumsfeld acknowledged that 'someone, somewhere' had dubbed 'some preliminary aspect' of the Pentagon's military preparations Infinite Justice.

The code name had been passed on to reporters by defence officials on Wednesday, along with news of deployments of U.S. warplanes.

Whether the name Infinite Justice will stick, 'given what you've said and what I was aware of, I just don't know the answer. But I doubt it,' Mr Rumsfeld told the reporter who cited Islamic scholars. 'I don't think it can be said often enough that this is not an effort that is aimed at any religion or any people particularly, or even the people of a country.'

President Bush: "Justice will be done"
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2001

George W Bush in an address to both houses of Congress said, Osama Bin Laden and his followers in the al-Qaeda organisation were believed to be responsible, and demanded that the ruling Taleban in Afghanistan hand them over immediately or "share in their fate".

In his speech, Mr Bush paid tribute to the acts of heroism of rescuers who had fought to save people from the ruins of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, which were hit by airborne suicide attacks on 11 September.

"Tonight we are a country awakened to danger, said Mr Bush, adding that the US had been "called to defend freedom".

Mr Bush carefully outlined who he believed carried out the attacks, and in particular singled out Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation.

He said the US respected the people of Afghanistan, but attacked the Taleban regime, which he said had "brutalised" the country.

The president urged the Taleban to "deliver to United States all leaders of the al-Qaeda organisation."

"The Taleban must act and must act immediately. They must hand over the terrorists or share their fate," warned Mr Bush.

Mr Bush said the terrorists hated America because they hated democracy and freedom. "They stand against us because we stand in their way."

"They follow in the path of Nazism and totalitarianism ... and they will follow that path all the way to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."

And in a blunt warning, Mr Bush said: "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make ... either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

"From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbour or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime," he added.

Mr Bush urged the American people to be "calm and resolute" while US armed forces embark on a prolonged campaign against those responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington which left more than 6,000 people dead.

Although Mr Bush revealed nothing of the US' precise intentions, he told the military to "be ready", and said that America would "meet violence with patient justice."

"Americans should expect a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on television, and covert operations, secret even in success," he said.

Earlier on Thursday it was revealed that US troops were being deployed as well as extra fighters and bombers ordered to within striking distance of Afghanistan, host to Osama Bin Laden who the US considers the prime suspect in the attacks.

In his speech, Mr Bush insisted that the US is conducting a war against terrorism, not Islam, and urge tolerance towards America's Muslims.

The address follows an intense day of talks with world leaders, including UK Prime Minister Tony Blair who has promised the US unwavering support in their campaign.

The stock market slump deepened
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2001

Amid growing fears over the world economy, with the FTSE 100 heading towards its lowest level in four years.

In mid-afternoon trading, the FTSE slumped 162 points or 3.4% to 4,559.9, exactly where it started its long ascent in October 1998. Paris was off 3.4% and Frankfurt was down 3.8%. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 165 points or 1.9% to 8,593.8 within the first half hour of trading.

In one of the biggest declines, British Airways dropped 6.8% to 152.25p after it said it was cutting 5,200 more jobs, taking total job cuts announced this month to 7,000. Airbus partner BAE Systems was down 7% amid fears over reduced demand for commercial planes, while engine maker Rolls-Royce also lost ground.

The latest sell-off hit virtually all sectors, with banking stocks among those hardest hit. Oil giants Shell and BP dropped amid concern about the impact on both companies of a decline in demand for oil and fuel. The biggest loser, however, was the troubled telecom group, Marconi, which was off 14% to just 21.75p on the eve of its demotion from the FTSE 100.

The markets have gone into a tailspin amid a spate of corporate warnings on both sides of the Atlantic. There have been now about 50 profit warnings from US firms directly or indirectly linked to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The Dow yesterday shed 144 points, to close at 8,759, its lowest level since October 1998.

Piling on the gloom, the European Central Bank today belatedly acknowledged that the US could endure a protracted economic slowdown, while the risks for the world economy are on the downside.

In its September monthly report, the ECB said that even before last week's terror attacks in the US, the timing and magnitude of the rebound in world demand were uncertain. Until a few days ago, the ECB was playing down the risk of global recession.

A day never to be forgotten
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2001

( R Emrit ) September 11, 2001 is an indelible day that no one will ever forget. It was the most devastating experience not only for America, but the world over. Whether we have immediate family or not residing in America, we are all affected, as we are one big family. Terrorist attack on America has had a global effect in all ways possible, almost totally negative.

But, as we continuously hear, behind every dark cloud is a silver lining. Now, what could be a silver lining to this tragedy?
The peoples of the world are bonding together as we all feel the pain with our brother. It's a closeness that we have never witnessed before and it reminds us clearly that in situations like these, the human spirit is strong and loving and will work together to deal with the unexpected.

People are now recognizing the value of life and are no longer taking it for granted. Can you imagine losing your life in a split second in the most senseless way? Sometimes it takes dreadful events like these for us to appreciate this gift of life. I am sure most of us are thinking twice before falling prey to the minor daily miseries in life.
Security measures: We learn mainly from our shortcomings and I am certain that governments the world over are appraising their security measures and improving where necessary as a result of this mishap. Who knows, this tragedy may be a learning lesson that will prepare us for even worse attacks on our freedom to live. Our spirituality and faith have been forcefully reawakened.

We will find it difficult to make see a good out of this tragedy. Yet, we must make efforts to see the positive, whatever little, and move on. I pray that the people of America will be specially blessed and strengthened to cope with this misfortune as we come together to purge the world of negativity.

5 Israelis detained for `puzzling behavior' after WTC tragedy
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2001

( haaretzdaily.com ) Five Israelis who had worked for a moving company based in New Jersey are being held in U.S. prisons for what the Federal Bureau of Investigation has described as "puzzling behavior" following the terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York last Tuesday. The five are expected to be deported sometime soon.

The families of the five, who asked that their names not be released, said that their sons had been questioned by the FBI for hours on end, had been kept in solitary confinement for three days, and had been humiliated, stripped of their clothes and blindfolded.

The mother of one of the young men explained the chain of events as she understands it to Ha'aretz:

She said that the five had worked for the company, which is owned by an Israeli, for between two months and two years. They had been arrested some four hours after the attack on the Twin Towers while filming the smoking skyline from the roof of their company's building, she said. It appears that they were spotted by one of the neighbors who called the police and the FBI. MORE

British actors urge world leaders to call off war
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2001

A group of British actors has urged the world's leaders to call a halt to a campaign against countries which harbour terrorists.
The nine-strong group, which includes playwright Harold Pinter and Corin Redgrave, appeal to stop the "madness" of a new world war following last week's attacks.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, they say a war against Afghanistan, Iraq and the world's poorest countries "will not rescue any victims of September 11, or make the cities of America and Europe safer".

The actors stress the war must be prevented for the sake of all who were killed in New York and Washington and their families, friends and loved ones.

The letter says: "Terrorism cannot be defeated by bombs, bullets or secret intelligence. MORE

Bin Laden should leave Afghanistan
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2001

KABUL - The Islamic clerics of Afghanistan have decided they would like to see Osama bin Laden leave the country, but they won't force him to go.

Hundreds of clerics met for two days in Kabul at the request of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.

On Thursday, the state news agency reported their suggestion was to ask bin Laden to leave.

"The Ulema wants the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan to encourage Osama to leave Afghanistan, but of his own free will," the Bakhtar news agency reported.

The meeting was called by the Taliban after the United States pressured the rulers to turn over bin Laden, the leading suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. They have said Afghanistan will be attacked if they don't turn him over. MORE

Size Of World Trade Center Towers Their Undoing
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2001

Source: Swarthmore College (http://www.swarthmore.edu)

Massive Size Of World Trade Center Towers Their Undoing, Swarthmore College Physics Professor Says

Despite the impulse to rebuild, the size of skyscrapers such as the World Trade Center Towers makes them attractive targets to terrorists, says a Swarthmore College professor. According to physics professor Frank Moscatelli, of the three sources of energy delivered to New York City Tuesday morning -- exploded jet fuel, kinetic energy due to the motion of two aircraft, and gravitational potential energy due to the falling building material -- the last is the most devestating.
"My calculations show that the largest component by far was the latter," says Moscatelli, a native New Yorker. "This is due to the large mass and height of the towers. Their splendor was their undoing."

According to Moscatelli, the numbers, in metric Joules, are:

1. 6.9x10^10 (both planes)

2. 1.9x10^9 (both planes)

3. 6.8x10^11 (both towers plus sundry other collapses)

"This is equivalent to the detonation of 0.2 Kilo tons of TNT," Moscatelli says. "As comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was 10 kilo tons TNT equivalent." Moscatelli estimates these numbers to be accurate to within about 25 percent.

"Being from New York, I understand the desire to rebuild those towers," Moscatelli says. "But we might consider for a moment the wisdom of reconstructing buildings that stick out as such clear targets and hold such destructive potential as well."

Editor's Note: The original news release can be found at http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/Media/Releases/01/towers.html

Maher sorry for politically incorrect comment
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2001

LOS ANGELES, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Bill Maher, the irreverent host of late-night talk show "Politically Incorrect," apologized on Wednesday for saying some U.S. military actions were "cowardly" -- a remark many said was not only politically incorrect but offensive.

His televised comments Monday night prompted retailer Sears, Roebuck and Co. and delivery giant FedEx Corp. (NYSE:FDX - news) to cancel their advertising on the program, citing complaints they had received from angry viewers. The show is broadcast on ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS - news).

In a statement issued through his publicist, Maher said his views "should have been expressed differently."

"In no way was I intending to say, nor have I ever thought, that the men and women who defend our nation in uniform are anything but courageous and valiant, and I offer my apologies to anyone who took it wrong," Maher said.

According to a transcript on ABC's Web site (http://www.abc.com), Maher made the reference while discussing past U.S. military campaigns.

"We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away," he said. "That's cowardly."

Maher contrasted the U.S. military actions to those taken by attackers who flew hijacked commercial airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last week. President George W. Bush has called the attacks "cowardly acts".

"We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away," he said. "That's cowardly."

Maher contrasted the U.S. military actions to those taken by attackers who flew hijacked commercial airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last week. President George W. Bush has called the attacks "cowardly acts".

"Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly," Maher said.

In his statement Wednesday, Maher said his criticism of U.S. military actions "was meant for politicians who, fearing public reaction, have not allowed our military to do the job they are obviously ready, willing and able to do, and who now will, I'm certain, as they always have, get it done." MORE

Gavyn Davies is BBC chair
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

Economist Gavyn Davies has been confirmed as the new chairman of the BBC, one of the most influential posts in UK broadcasting.
Mr Davies has been vice-chairman for eight months, and has also been chief economist at finance house Goldman Sachs as well as a former economic adviser to governments.

It had been widely expected that Mr Davies would get the £77,590-a-year job after Sir Christopher Bland announced he was leaving for BT five months ago.

Mr Davies has spoken of the "thrill and privilege" at landing the job. MORE

Russia uneasy about US plans
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

There are signs that Russia is becoming uneasy about United States plans for military retaliation against Afghanistan for harbouring Osama bin Laden - named by the Americans as the chief suspect of last week's attacks in the United States.

The head of the Russian Security Council, Vladimir Rushailo, has said that any action would have to be within international law and avoid civilian casualties.

Mr Rushailo was speaking in Kazakhstan, on the first leg of a tour of five Central Asian states to discuss the threat from international terrorism.

The Kazakh foreign minister, Yerlan Idrisov, said Kazakhstan would fully cooperate with the United States but said such cooperation would be in close contact with Moscow.

Mr Rushailo then travelled to Uzbekistan, which has said it might allow American forces to use its territory to attack Afghanistan. The BBC Moscow correspondent says Russia fears this might be the beginning of a long-term American military presence in what it considers to be its own backyard.

U.S. to pressure Megawati on anti-terror help
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

( Japan Today ) WASHINGTON — Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, on a visit to Washington this week, will come under determined pressure to more actively support the U.S. war on terrorism, senior officials said on Tuesday.

Indonesia is home to the world's largest Muslim community and the Bush administration believes Megawati can be influential in taking a stand against the Islamic militants that Washington says were behind last week's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they told Reuters.

Megawati, who became leader of fractious and troubled Indonesia less than two months ago, is to meet President George W. Bush on Wednesday.

"She wanted this meeting (with Bush) and she's going to get it," a senior U.S. official said.

But the U.S. view is "that what the Indonesians have done (so far on the U.S. call for anti-terror support) is minimal, that they should have been doing and need to be doing more," he said.

Among the U.S. demands are that Megawati "explain ... that these people (who attacked the United States) are fanatics" and do not reflect the world Muslim community, he said.

Washington understands Megawati has domestic concerns about siding with it more firmly but "we have a real urgency here and right now she's about as laid back as she can get," he said.

But another official noted the United States has not worked with Indonesia on this type of campaign in the past and it will have to proceed cautiously because of complications stemming from Indonesia's own problems with separatists and other militants. MORE

Islamic groups warn of Indonesia violence
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

Radical Islamic groups in Indonesia have warned they will attack American targets in the country if the United States takes military action against Afghanistan.

The warning comes as Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri prepares for talks with her US counterpart, George W Bush, in Washington on Wednesday.

As the leader of the world's largest Muslim country, Megawati is expected to come under particular pressure to support American plans to retaliate against Afghanistan for harbouring Osama Bin Laden.

A group of nine hard-line Islamic organisations gave the warning at a news conference in Jakarta just a few hours before President Megawati was due to meet Mr Bush.

They said they would be following the word of God if they fought back following any American military strikes against fellow Muslims or Islamic countries.

The leader of one of the groups had earlier told the BBC they would attack any American organisations, including businesses. He added they would also search for US citizens living in Indonesia. MORE NY TIMES

Jakarta to act on illegal immigrants
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

The Indonesian authorities are to step up their efforts to combat illegal immigration as part of a drive to prevent suspected terrorists from entering the country.

A senior Indonesian immigration official, Mohammed Indra, said the government was concerned that Afghan militants might be among the many illegal immigrants who arrive in the country.

In recent weeks hundreds of Afghans have crossed Indonesia on their way to claim asylum in Australia.

Indonesia's Vice-President, Hamzah Haz, said meanwhile that the government should not reject any demands from the United States relating to international anti-terrorism measures.

He said the authorities were considering drafting anti-terrorism legislation and promised increased intelligence operations.

Iran denies it approves of U.S. military attack on Afghanistan
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

Tehran, Sept 19, IRNA -- An informed official at the Iranian Foreign
Ministry here on Tuesday strongly denied a report issued by the Canadian daily `The National Post' that Iran will support a possible
U.S. military attack on Afghanistan.

The daily reported on Tuesday that Iran has, via Canada, sent a message to the U.S. government saying it would not oppose targeted military strikes against those believed to be responsible for last week's terrorist attacks in the United States.

Canadian Foreign Minister John Manley has also denied the report.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has admitted that the Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden, is the prime suspect in last week's terrorist attacks in the U.S.
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Iraq denies any role in US terror attacks
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

BAGHDAD, Sept 19 (AFP) - Iraq played no role whatsoever in the September 11 kamikaze attacks in the United States, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said in an interview published Wednesday.

"The United States, Great Britain, the Western states and the rest of the world know full well that Iraq has no link, near or far, with the attacks against American interests," the minister told the Al-Iqtissadi weekly.

In Washington, a US government source said Tuesday that the Central Intelligence Agency was checking reports that a hijacker of one of the airliners that crashed into New York's World Trade Center met a senior Iraqi intelligence official prior to the terror attacks.

"There is an indication that such a meeting occurred earlier this year in Europe," said the source.

The hijacker was Mohammed Atta, the man who is believed to have been on the American Airlines plane that was the first to crash into the World Trade Center.

But the CIA was not certain the meeting "had anything to do with Tuesday's events," the source added.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday the United States had no evidence about Baghdad's involvement in the plot. MORE

US seeks 'Euro-global' consensus
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

The United States is stepping up its diplomatic initiative to build a global coalition against terrorism, a week after the attacks on New York and Washington.

President George Bush is holding a series of meetings with world leaders to rally support for possible retaliatory military action, expected to be mainly against targets in Afghanistan.

And there were signs of a continuing US military build-up in the region, as the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt prepares to join two others in the Gulf. MORE

Boeing will lay off up to 30,000 workers
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Airplane manufacturer Boeing Co. is planning to lay off as many as 30,000 employees in large measure because of last week's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The layoffs will be made by the end of 2002, Boeing officials said. The commercial airliner is expected to make a formal announcement later Wednesday.

Alan Mulally, president of the company's commercial aircraft division, said "It looks to us both domestically and internationally that the airlines are going to need substantially fewer airplanes than they did before last week."

"We profoundly regret that these actions will impact the lives of so many of our highly valued employees," he said.

"However, it is critical that we take these necessary steps now to size the Commercial Airplanes business to support the difficult and uncertain environment faced by our airline customers." MORE

Soviet record begs re-thinking Afghanistan
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- As the Pentagon struggles with how -- indeed, whether -- to retaliate militarily for last week's terrorist attack on Washington and New York, it is drawing on a body of knowledge collected from the former Soviet Union which fought a fruitless, decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Prime suspect Osama Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in land-locked Afghanistan, as inhospitable a place to western armies as can be imagined. The climate, altitude, terrain and tough, resourceful people make perilous any conventional military campaign and even a limited raid of special forces commandos.

"This is not a risk-free operation that we are embarking upon," said NATO commander Gen. Joseph Ralston Tuesday in Vienna. "There will be casualties. That is a necessary part of any military operations. We can not be in the mindset of a zero-casualty operation. That's not what were about. We have to get the mission done."

Another mindset the United States must resist is one learned the hard way by the Soviets in their 1979 to 1989 occupation of Afghanistan. That is, it "is not a war of technology versus peasantry. Rather, it is a contest of endurance and national will," wrote Lt. Col. Lester Grau and Afghan Army Gen. Mohammed Yahya Nawroz in a paper commissioned by the U.S. Army.

"The side with the greatest moral commitment (ideological, religious or patriotic) will hold the ground at the end of the conflict. Battlefield victory can be almost irrelevant, since victory is often determined by morale, obstinacy and survival," state the retired experts.

In short, to the dogged -- not the best equipped -- goes victory. MORE

UN Council tells Taliban to hand over bin Laden
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Security Council members have told Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to surrender Osama bin Laden "immediately and unconditionally" as called for in council resolutions.

"There is one and only one message the Security Council has for the Taliban: Implement United Nations Security Council resolutions, in particular Resolution 1333, immediately and unconditionally," French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, this month's council president, said.

That resolution, adopted December. 19, imposed a second round of sanctions on the Taliban, including an arms embargo, in an unsuccessful effort to have them surrender bin Laden, under indictment in the United States for allegedly plotting the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa. MORE

U.S. faces fierce opposition in Pakistan
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Risking a Muslim backlash, Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is preparing an address to the nation that is expected to outline his country's role in any U.S. military action in neighboring Afghanistan.

But unhappiness among many Pakistanis towards the United States is threatening to sour or, at worst, disrupt any agreement reached between the two governments over the use of airspace and deployment of ground troops in Pakistan.

Pakistan has pledged "full support" to the United States if there is a strike against Afghanistan -- an event that appears likely because of the safe haven the ruling Taliban have given to Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the September 11 assault on the United States.

But Musharraf has found himself increasingly under pressure to find a resolution to the mounting crisis that balances both the demands of the United States and Pakistan's own Islamic population, many of whom have expressed support for the Taliban.

Musharraf is expected to make the address Wednesday at 8.30 p.m. local time (1500 GMT). MORE CNN

US forces Middle East ceasefire
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

President George Bush last night overcame a major hurdle to building an international coalition against terrorism when he forced the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to agree to a long-sought Middle East ceasefire.
He used America's enormous economic and political clout to bring Mr Sharon in particular to heel, fearful that Israeli incursions into the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza during the past week would wreck his attempts to include Arab and other Muslim countries in the coalition.

As part of a total rethink of the Bush administration's foreign policy since the New York and Washington attacks, the president is taking a tougher line with Israel in an attempt to secure a speedy end to a conflict that feeds Arab hatred of the United States.

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, after speaking to Mr Arafat and Mr Sharon, welcomed the ceasefire as "an encouraging development". "We see some promise this morning," he said.

Under the agreement, the Palestinians will call off their fighters and Israel will pull its tanks back from flashpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.

But last night the militant Palestinian Islamist group Islamic Jihad said it rejected the ceasefire. "Islamic Jihad in Palestine rejects the so-called ceasefire, which comes at a time when the Zionist enemy continues its aggression," the group said in a statement faxed to Reuters in Beirut.

Arafat the winner in ceasefire battle
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2001

Sharon falls foul of US pressure to build coalition

( Guardian UK )From the moment the first airliner hit the World Trade Centre last Tuesday morning both sides in the Middle East conflict viewed the event through the prism of their own tactical advantage.

From that point of view, the week began badly for Yasser Arafat, but it was ultimately Ariel Sharon who overplayed his hand and was forced to make the greater concessions, clearing the way for yesterday's ceasefire and an imminent return to negotiations.

The terrorist attack confronted Mr Arafat with a crucial decision. When the Gulf war broke out, the Palestinian leader had thrown his lot in with Saddam Hussein. It made him popular in the street, but he has been paying the price diplomatically ever since.

This time, by all accounts, he did not hesitate. He sent a message to Washington almost immediately condemning the hijackers and expressing his condolences. His efforts were, however, rapidly undermined by television images from the West Bank showing a small crowd of Palestinithough redundantly) giving blood for the people of New York, but the damage had been done.

Meanwhile, Mr Sharon seized the attack as an opportunity. In his messages to the White House, he emphasised the parallels between the terrorists who had attacked New York and Washington and the Palestinian Authority. Casting its actions as part of an international crusade, he sent tanks in to Jenin and Jericho to quell unrest.

The Israeli military moves coincided with exploratory calls made by the secretary of state, Colin Powell, last Wednesday and Thursday. One Arab state after another expressed its condolences and a commitment to help, but each made the point that a comprehensive battle against extremists was impossible while battles between Israeli troops and Palestinians could be seen daily on Arab televisions. MORE

US aims beyond Bin Laden
Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2001

The United States has indicated that the surrender of Osama Bin Laden would not be enough to avert a military strike against terrorism.

The US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that while Bin Laden's capture would be welcome, it would not deal with those who shelter terrorists or the organisation which he belonged to.

He said: "Clearly you begin on a journey with one step, and he would be one step."

His remarks on US television came as Washington waited for the Taleban authorities in Afghanistan to decide whether to extradite Bin Laden, who is the prime suspect for the suicide plane attacks last week on New York and the Pentagon. MORE

Russian forces claim they have regained control
Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Russian authorities say they have detained more than 400 people following new rebel attacks in Chechnya, including a bold assault on the second largest city, Gudermes.
Ten senior officers died when their helicopter was shot down by rebels over the capital Grozny.

At least 10 Russian army troops were also killed during the rebel attack on Gudermes, the administrative base for many pro-Moscow officials.

In the town of Argun, an apparent suicide driver crashed his lorry into some administrative offices, killing one person and injuring another.

Russian General Valery Baranov told Russian TV that his forces had now regained control of the areas of Gudermes which had fallen into rebel hands on Monday.

He said suspected rebel strongholds had been bombed across Chechnya, and that more than 400 people had been detained. MORE

Afghans delay talks on bin Laden's fate
Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2001

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's highest-ranking Islamic clerics have postponed for at least one day a planned grand council meeting called to discuss what to do with Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, a Taliban official said.

"The meeting will happen either tomorrow (Wednesday) or the next day," said a senior Taliban official who declined to be identified.

The official gave no reason for the delay in the meeting, called by Mullah Mohammad Omar, spiritual leader of the purist Taliban, to discuss how to respond to mounting signs that the United States plans a strike on Afghanistan.

The Shura of some 1,000 clerics was convened by Mullah Omar, but the reclusive spiritual leader was not expected to attend. MORE

Dan Rather Cries On Letterman Show
Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2001

In his first show since last week's attacks, funnyman Dave Letterman was all serious business last night, bringing hardened newsman Dan Rather to tears twice while discussing the hatred the terrorists showed toward America.
Letterman at times questioned whether he should even be there during his straightforward, 10-minute monologue, in which he shared with the audience his feelings on last week's events.

Rather, his first guest, began to shed tears as they reflected on the attack and the 'reasons' behind it. It was obvious that he was playing with the emotions of the views. Rather said, "they don't like us for our way of life".

Rather is familiar with the history of American abuses to smaller nations, especially the CIA's role in equipping and financing the Talibans. In this moment of rallying the public for war, even reporters have joined the disinformation campaign.

More pain for US airlines
Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2001

( BBC ) Empty check-in halls show the airlines' predicament

President George W Bush has ordered what the White House called a "comprehensive" package to support the airline industry, which is suffering a catastrophic drop in traffic in the wake of the US attacks.
No money has yet been promised the ailing industry, but executives of major airlines are due to meet White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey on Tuesday to discuss what help they can expect from the federal government.

The news came as US Airways, the country's sixth-largest carrier, announced 11,000 job cuts - almost one-quarter of its workforce - and slashed its schedule by 23%. MORE

Central banks cut rates
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2001

( Guardian UK ) The US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank today cut half a point off interest rates in an aggressive move intended to avert a collapse in world markets.

On a tumultuous day for traders, the Fed shaved rates to 3% an hour before Wall Street reopened for business after a four-day closure caused by last week's suicide attacks in New York and Washington. Despite the Fed's move, a "patriotic rally" failed to materialise and the Dow Jones industrial average shed more than 500 points in the first hour of trading. It stabilised in lunchtime trading and was hovering around the 9,000 mark. The Nasdaq index of technology shares also slumped, falling 100 points by lunchtime.

Hours later the European Central Bank (ECB) also cut rates by 0.5% to 3.75%. The ECB said it was acting in concert with the Fed - despite denials last week from ECB officials of moves to coordinate rate cuts. The Bank of Canada also cut rates by 0.5%.

Central bank action followed a week of frenetic activity among finance ministers and central bankers around the world in response to an attack that paralysed the world's financial capital for four days.

Markets have already fallen by 8% since last Tuesday's attacks; MORE

Stocks dive as U.S. talks war
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2001

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States, still counting bodies from last week's air attacks, has cut interest rates to bolster economic confidence but stock markets tumbled about 5 percent after the opening.

After a two-minute silence and the singing of "God Bless America," Wall Street resumed operations after a four-day shutdown only a few blocks from the still-smoking rubble of the World Trade Centre's 110-story twin towers. Thousands of bodies remain to be recovered and the death toll is expected to exceed 5,000.

In the first hour of trading on Monday, the Dow Jones industrials dropped by over 500 points and the Nasdaq was 100 points lower -- both representing falls of about 5 percent to 6 percent. MORE

Musharraf - Nation to be taken into full confidence
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2001

( paknews.com ) ISLAMABAD, September 17 (PNS): President Gen Pervez Musharraf Sunday assured the nation that any decision regarding the extent of cooperation to be given to the US in fight against global terrorism would be taken only after taking the nation into confidence and keeping the integrity, sovereignty and the security of the country its prime priority.

He expressed these views while talking to local editors at the Chief Executive Secretariat to exchange views and develop a consensus on the latest situation developing in the region due to the US attacks.

The President said the government is in close coordination with the US authorities and their demands were reviewed in details at the Corps Commander moot, National Security Council, and the Federal Cabinet session however the final decision would be taken only after taking into considerations the national defence and integrity. MORE

Racist attack on Afghan taxi driver in UK
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2001

Police are investigating a racial attack - in which remarks were made about the atrocities in the US - which left an Afghan minicab driver paralysed.
The victim, who now lives in Acton, west London, had picked up three men and a woman in the area before dropping them off in Twickenham on Sunday.

Police officers found the 28-year-old man shortly after 3am outside the Prince Blucher pub on The Green, Twickenham.

He was taken with serious injuries by ambulance to West Middlesex Hospital, where his condition deteriorated.

The victim was transferred to Charing Cross Hospital where he is currently stable in the high dependency unit.

He is paralysed from the neck down.

Police believe the victim had picked up the customers in a blue VW Golf with the registration number N869 UJB and had dropped them off in the Staines Road area of Twickenham.

It is thought the incident stemmed from a dispute over the fare, after which the victim was attacked by the male passengers who he describes as being in their early twenties. MORE BBC

News Online users message for Bush
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2001

( BBC )As US President George W Bush gathers his closest political and military advisers at the Camp David retreat, people contacting the BBC have been offering a wide range of opinion on what the American response to Tuesday's attacks on New York and Washington should be.

Contributors to a two-hour special edition of the BBC's Talking Point programme, broadcast on Sunday live on radio and the internet, are divided between those who want retaliation and others who urge caution.

Many of the people who have contacted Talking Point from Europe have counselled that military action would be a mistake. MORE

Sharon puts Arab support for US at risk
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2001

( Guardian UK) Israel emerged as an early stumbling block to Washington's plans to recruit Arab states to a broad war coalition yesterday as the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, rebuffed US calls for ceasefire talks, and ordered the third invasion of a Palestinian-ruled city in less than a week.
European countries, including Britain, fear that Israel is using the international focus on events in the US as a cover for punitive actions against the Palestinians that contravene international law. Last week the foreign office protested tothe Sharon government after the Israeli assault on the West Bank city of Jenin.

Before dawn yesterday seven Israeli tanks entered Ramallah, the capital of Yasser Arafat's administration in the West Bank, and shelled security posts and private homes, wounding five Palestinian protesters and killing a policeman. The Israeli military said one of its soldiers was also killed. MORE

Bin Laden divides Arab opinion
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2001

( BBC ) While Osama Bin Laden still enjoys surprising popularity among many ordinary Arabs, mention his name in a Saudi shopping mall and heads will turn nervously.

The Saudi-born Islamist dissident may top the list of world terror suspects, but in his home country he is officially a non-person.

The Saudi Government stripped him of his Saudi nationality seven years ago after he openly criticised the ruling family for letting US troops be based there.

As a pariah and an exile, he is not someone to be spoken about in public. But privately, Saudis have lots to say about him, particularly now.

For years, Bin Laden has been an outspoken critic of America and the West - views that have some support amongst more religious-minded Saudis and other Arabs. MORE

Pakistan to demand handover of Bin Laden
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

Afghanistan faces massive military retalitation unless it hands over terror suspect Osama bin Laden within three days, according to an ultimatum to be delivered by Pakistan tomorrow.
A Pakistani delegation travelling to Afghanistan will deliver the ultimatum to the Taliban regime, demanding that the prime suspect behind Tuesday's suicide attacks on New York and Washington be given up.

The Pakistani initiative followed a late-night telephone conversation between US President George Bush and his Pakistani counterpart General Pervez Musharraf. In an indication of the breadth of the coming American response to Tuesday's attacks, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said America would go after countries that harboured terrorists and their organisations.

"If you do not have an army to go after or a navy to go after, you have to go after the network and you have to then also go after the countries that are harbouring them," Mr Rumsfeld said. "Some of the countries that are harbouring terrorist networks do in fact have high-value targets, they do have capitals, they do have armies. What we need to do is go to the countries that have knowledge and tell them that it has to stop and if it does not stop, we have to help stop it."

In a thinly veiled warning to Afghanistan, the US defence secretary, Dick Cheney, warned that the US would come down hard on countries providing sanctuary to terrorists.

"They have to understand, and others like them around the world have to understand, that if you offer sanctuary to terrorists, you face the full wrath of the United States of America," Mr Cheney said, adding that he had no doubt that Bin Laden's organisation was involved in the attacks.

Backlash against Pakistan
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

As Mr Bush assembles an international coalition to crush "those who have chosen their own destruction", Islamic leaders warned that Pakistan risks a violent backlash by helping the US in any retaliation against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

"Any aggression against Afghanistan will have very dangerous consequences and we have no choice other than to support our Islamic brethren," said Munawwar Hassan, general secretary of the extremist Jamaat-e-Islami or Islamic party.

His warning followed Pakistan's decision to offer "its full support" to the US in any international reply to the terror attacks, in effect pledging Pakistan's soil and airspace to an assault on Afghanistan.

Gen Musharraf has begun a series of meetings to win support from religious and political leaders for aligning Islamabad with Washington.

The emerging US-Pakistani alliance will pose a severe test for Gen Musharraf, caught in a squeeze between the US and his own Islamic fundamentalists.

About 300 religious activists in Islamabad waved banners and shouted slogans yesterday, denouncing the US and praising Bin Laden, the Saudi dissident who has been cited by Mr Bush as the prime suspect in Tuesday's terror attacks.

The Taliban has threatened to wage war on any country aiding a US assault on Afghanistan.

"If any regional or neighbouring country helps the US attack us it would spark extraordinary dangers ... It would draw us into a reprisal war," said Abdul Salam Zaeef, the militia's ambassador to Pakistan.

Pakistan has bolstered military security along its 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan, after reportedly agreeing to a US demand to seal the border, though some people with valid travel documents were still crossing today.

Reports from Kabul say that buses are heading east towards Pakistan, crammed with people. Most were Afghans with family members living there.

"We don't know whether we should run or hide," said Morad Ali, a civil servant in Kabul.

Meanwhile, Britain has advised British nationals in northern Pakistan near the Afghan border to leave immediately.

The last of the international aid workers in Afghanistan left the capital today after the Taliban told them they could not guarantee their safety in the event of an American assault.

The International Red Cross, which rarely withdraws from a war-torn nation, pulled out its remaining 15 foreign aid workers.

Cheney: More Terrorists May Be Here
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

VP, Bush also confirm order was issued to shoot down jets

( Newsday ) Vice President Dick Cheney warned yesterday that the elaborate plans undertaken by the terrorists who attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center made him concerned that additional plotters could still be inside the country contriving more attacks.

In his first interview since Tuesday, Cheney also revealed that shortly after the attacks began, President George W. Bush had authorized the military to shoot down any commercial airplanes in Washington, D.C., that refused to follow orders.

"I gave our military the orders necessary to protect Americans," Bush confirmed yesterday afternoon outside the White House. "Of course, that was difficult. Never did I dream we would be under attack this way."

The order came after the second plane hit the World Trade Center, but it was not clear whether it was before or after the third plane hit the Pentagon. MORE

"The Lone Dissenter" Barbara Lee
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

On September 15, Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, cast the lone vote in all of Congress against giving President Bush blanket authority to retaliate for the September 11 attacks.

Here is what she said on the House floor:

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart, one that is filled with sorrow for the families and loved ones who were killed and injured in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Only the most foolish or the most callous would not understand the grief that has gripped the American people and millions across the world.

This unspeakable attack on the United States has forced me to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction. September 11 changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.

I know that this use-of-force resolution will pass although we all know that the President can wage a war even without this resolution. However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. There must be some of us who say, let's step back for a moment and think through the implications of our actions today -- let us more fully understand its consequences.

We are not dealing with a conventional war. We cannot respond in a conventional manner. I do not want to see this spiral out of control. This crisis involves issues of national security, foreign policy, public safety, intelligence gathering, economics, and murder. Our response must be equally multifaceted.

We must not rush to judgment. Far too many innocent people have already died. Our country is in mourning. If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that women, children, and other noncombatants will be caught in the crossfire.

Nor can we let our justified anger over these outrageous acts by vicious murderers inflame prejudice against all Arab Americans, Muslims, Southeast Asians, or any other people because of their race, religion, or ethnicity.

Finally, we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes.

In 1964, Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson the power to "take all necessary measures" to repel attacks and prevent further aggression. In so doing, this House abandoned its own constitutional responsibilities and launched our country into years of undeclared war in Vietnam.

At that time, Sen. Wayne Morse, one of two lonely votes against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, declared, "I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States ... I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake."

Sen. Morse was correct, and I fear we make the same mistake today.

And I fear the consequences.

I have agonized over this vote. But I came to grips with it in the very painful yet beautiful memorial service today at the National Cathedral. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.

Protests in Pakistan over US support
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

Hard-line Muslims in Pakistan are demonstrating against plans by their government to tell Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden.

Demonstrators have burned US flags and shouted slogans in support of bin Laden and the Taliban.

Protesters also warned the Pakistani government they would fight on the side of Afghanistan's Islamic militia.

"If Afghanistan is attacked we will take part in the fight against America," shouted militant Muslim leader, Abdul Ahad, to an estimated 1,000 demonstrators in northwest Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

In the capital of Islamabad, demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans.

Newspapers in Pakistan received an electronic mail from a man purporting to be bin Laden. The email issued an order to kill Americans and "their allies, civilian and military," calling it a duty of every Muslim.

There was no way to prove that the electronic mail came from the terrorist, although the Taliban deny he has access to any communications.

Meanwhile President General Pervez Musharraf met with politicians and Islamic clerics to get their support for Islamabad's promise to give "full support" to the United States to retaliate for the attacks.

Gen Musharraf sought to assure Islamic clerics, said the state-run news agency, Associated Press of Pakistan.

"Every decision of the government is directed toward the objective of unity, integrity and welfare of the nation," he said. "Hence it is imperative that all should join hands to consolidate the integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan."

Afghan opposition leader dead
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

The lynchpin of the anti-Taleban movement in Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Masood, has been confirmed dead following a bomb attack last week.

The confirmation, after days of conflicting reports, is widely seen as a devastating blow to the opposition in a country now nearly totally controlled by the Islamic Taleban regime.

Opposition leaders have said the assassination involved the Taleban, Pakistan and supporters of Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi dissident accused of masterminding last Tuesday's attacks on New York and Washington.

The 49-year-old Masood had been giving an interview to two Arabs posing as journalists when a bomb went off. It had been concealed in a video camera. MORE BBC

The Shaping of a Generation Begins
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

(Newsday.com) IN THE NINTH month of the first year of the millennium, a new world was born. It is the world that our children will come of age in, and it is different from ours.

The parents of today's teenagers and young adults experienced their life-forming cataclysms in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963; Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in 1968. The Baby Boom generation absorbed these shocks - plus the much-hated Vietnam War - and became, well, children of the '60s: idealists, hippies, yippies, druggies, permanent students, dropouts. They became antiwar activists - and also soldiers. They became radicals - and Ronald Reagan Republicans. They became Bill Clinton - and Al Gore.

As with any generation, the children of the '60s were an amalgam of different types. But the image that has stuck and will be passed down through history books is of a generation of activists who turned against the adults in charge and took over, toppling rules and traditions for good or ill. MORE

Game Over
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

( Naomi Klein ) Now is the time in the game of war when we dehumanize our enemies.
They are utterly incomprehensible, their acts unimaginable, their motivations senseless. They are "madmen" and their states are "rogue."

Now is not the time for more understanding--just better intelligence. These are the rules of the war game. Feeling people will no doubt object to this characterization: war is not a game. It is real lives ripped in half; it is lost sons, daughters,mothers, and fathers, each with a dignified story. Tuesday's act of terror was reality of the harshest kind, an act that makes all other acts seem suddenly frivolous, game-like.

It's true: war is most emphatically not a game. And perhaps after Tuesday, it will never again be treated as one. Perhaps September 11, 2001 will mark the end of the shameful era of the video game war.

Watching the coverage on Tuesday was a stark contrast to the last time I sat glued to a television set watching a real-time war on CNN. The Space Invader battlefield of the Gulf War had almost nothing in common with what we have seen this week. Back then, instead of real buildings exploding over and over again, we saw only sterile bomb's-eye-views of concrete targets--there and then gone. Who was in these abstract polygons? We never found out. MORE

Talks with Osama bin Laden
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

( Robert Fisk ) The last time I saw Osama bin Laden was in a tent on a mountaintop camp in Afghanistan last year. A few meters away was a twenty-five-foot-high air raid shelter cut into the rock, a relic of bin Laden's days fighting the Soviet Army, but bombproof against even a cruise missile. bin Laden had entered the tent in his white Saudi robes, shaken hands with me and sat cross-legged on the rug, when he noticed that I had the latest Beirut daily newspapers in my bag. He seized upon them and poured over their pages for almost half an hour, one of his Arab mujahedeen in Afghan clothes holding a sputtering gas lamp over the papers. Carefully, bin Laden read the news from Iran, from his own country, from the Israel-occupied West Bank. Was it true, he asked me, that Iran was making a diplomatic d?rche to Saudi Arabia?

As I sat there watching the man who had declared a "holy war" against the United States a year earlier--the man who was supposedly the "mastermind of world terrorism"--I reflected that he didn't seem to know much about the world he was supposedly terrorizing. A Saudi who regards the leadership of his country with contempt, he had told me at a previous meeting in 1996, "If liberating my land is called terrorism, this is a great honor for me."

But not as great as the honor bestowed on him by President Clinton in the aftermath of the American missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan last month. "America's Public Enemy Number One"--Clinton's infantile description of bin Laden--must have appealed to a man whose simple view of the world is as politically naive as it is dangerous. Last year, upon that remote mountaintop amid the snow--so cold that there was ice in my hair when I awoke in the tent before dawn--bin Laden had seemed an isolated, almost lonely figure, largely ignored by a United States that was still obsessed with the "evil" Saddam Hussein. MORE

Israelis using events in the US to escalate violence
Posted: Sunday, September 16, 2001

Israeli tanks with helicopter support have thrust into the centre of the Palestinian-ruled town of Ramallah in the West Bank, killing a member of the Palestinian security forces and wounding 15 others in several hours of fighting.

Ali Khader Jaber, 26, was shot in the stomach when he went out on to the roof of his house after hearing shooting, Palestinian hospital sources said.

Another Palestinian man - an ambulance driver - was killed by shrapnel earlier in the night as he tried to transport people away from clashes in the town of Bethlehem.

Some tanks stopped only a few metres from the Palestinian Legislative Council building, witnesses said.

Helicopters continued to swoop overhead as the tanks rolled back to their positions outside Ramallah, spraying bullets from the air, the witnesses said.

The Israelis are using events in the US as an excuse to impose a military solution on their intifada, or uprising, against Israel's occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.

US attack on Afghanistan to result in world war: survey report
Posted: Saturday, September 15, 2001

( www.paknews.org ) A survey conducted by PNS here Friday in the backdrop of terrorist attacks on US and repercussions of possible US attack on Afghanistan under plea of Osama disclosed that people were unanimous in their opinion that any bid by US to launch attack on Afghanistan will not only endanger the security of the whole region but will also slide the country into unending civil war.

People minced no matters in asserting that the terrorist attacks on US can in no way prove that Osama was behind the brutal act as the scale at which the blood orgy took place is beyond the reach of Osama Bin Laden to either trigger or abet.

Commenting on the implications of terrorist attacks and US prospective strikes on Afghanistan people said that Western nations have always harboured animosity against Muslim Nationality and in a bid to give vent to their malice and venom have always held the Muslims responsible for terrorist activities.

Giving vent to his reaction, Wahid Qazi, a government employee termed the terrorist attacks on US as a Jewish conspiracy who want to pitch Christian against Muslims under plea of the attack. "Osama can not be involved in the heinous act of sheer terrorism as he wields no power nor have any massive sources to manipulate blood spree", he added. Intelligence agencies and a large network manoeuvre this activity, he maintained.

He expressed apprehension that Pakistan can be targeted by western world being a nuclear power as a Muslim nuclear country is indigestible and unacceptable to the West. MORE

Cheney Says U.S. Gave Orders to Shoot Down Airliners
Posted: Saturday, September 15, 2001

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Immediately after last Tuesday's attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush ordered U.S. military pilots to shoot down incoming commercial airliners over Washington if they did not divert, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday.

"The president made the decision ... that if the plane would not divert, if they wouldn't pay any attention to instructions to move away from the city, as a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out," Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" program. MORE

Giles Foden on the murky deals that fuelled international terrorism
Posted: Saturday, September 15, 2001

( Guardian UK ) During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, US officials passed billions in funding and training to the mojahedin. The CIA, in particular while under the direction of William Casey - head of the agency during the Reagan administration - was the main manager of these operations. With the Russian withdrawal in 1989, the CIA "celebrated its victory with champagne". So says Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Pluto Press, £12.99), the definitive account by ABC journalist John Cooley.

The celebrations, under the presidency of George Bush senior (himself a former CIA director), were premature. The sophisticated methods taught to the mojahedin, and the thousands of tonnes of arms supplied to them by the US - and Britain - are now tormenting the west in the phenomenon known as "blowback", whereby a policy strategy rebounds on its own devisers. The sins of the father, it might well be said, are being heaped on the head of the son.

Self-laceration may seem the last thing the US needs right now. But the lesson of these books is that only by facing up to its dark past will a beleaguered country be able to create a future in which terrorist attacks on this scale can be avoided. The whole issue of American "creation" of bin Laden in the Frankenstein's laboratory of Afghanistan during the 1980s is generally avoided by government sources. Cooley points out that while the State Department released a fact sheet on bin Laden in 1997 (the year prior to the bombing of the East African embassies), the document "omits the background facts which help to explain how early and close were his connections in the United States - making it easier for the Reagan-Casey jihad team to enlist his talents and his fortune". MORE

Arab-American community 'keeping its head down'
Posted: Saturday, September 15, 2001

NEW YORK (CNN) -- By Friday, many of the city's schools, offices and businesses had reopened. But Rabyaah Al-Thaibani says her family isn't opening its grocery store on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn for now.

Rabyaah says her uncle was threatened with violence by one of his suppliers on Thursday. The supplier was angered by Tuesday's terrorist strikes, suspected to have been carried out by people of Arabic origin.

"He said he would kill my uncle and the whole family if we didn't watch out," Rabyaah says. "We are all pretty terrified to walk out right now."

Hussein Ibish, communications director for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, says the Arab-American community "is keeping its head down for the moment."

"People from the community just don't want to be conspicuous right now."

Being inconspicuous for most members of the community means staying home, not going to work, not even going out to shop.

But Rabyaah does come out, to volunteer at the Arab-American Family Support Center in Brooklyn, where she works as a counselor. MORE CNN

New Type Of Concrete Helps Prevent Injuries In Explosions, Disasters
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2001

Source: North Carolina State University (http://www.ncsu.edu/)

Most people don't think about the tons of concrete in the buildings and structures around them until disasters strike, such as Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But Dr. Neven Krstulovic-Opara thinks about concrete every day.
Krstulovic-Opara, assistant professor of civil engineering at North Carolina State University, has been researching a special system for making concrete that may save lives, buildings and bridges by changing the way concrete structures fail. The system is called high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (HPFRC), and can be used in new construction or renovations.

It's designed in a way that prevents the separation of large pieces of concrete from the structure. When it fails, the pieces remain stuck together, held in place by the stainless steel fibers. The pieces that do separate from the structure are much smaller and less likely to cause injury.

"We know that concrete structures will eventually fail," said Krstulovic-Opara. "What we want to do is extend the length of time it takes for the structure to fail and control how it fails." MORE

Brain Imaging Study Sheds Light On Moral Decision-Making
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2001

Source: Princeton University (http://www.princeton.edu/)

In a study that combines philosophy and neuroscience, researchers have begun to explain how emotional reactions and logical thinking interact in moral decision-making.
Princeton University researchers reported in the Sept. 14 issue of Science that they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to analyze brain activity in people who were asked to ponder a range of moral dilemmas.

The results suggest that, while people regularly reach the same conclusions when faced with uncomfortable moral choices, their answers often do not grow out of the reasoned application of general moral principles. Instead, they draw on emotional reactions, particularly for certain kinds of moral dilemmas.

The results also show how tools of neuroscience are beginning to reveal the biological underpinnings of the subtlest elements of human behavior, said Joshua Greene, a graduate student in philosophy who conducted the study in collaboration with scientists in the psychology department and the Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior.

"We think of moral judgments as so ethereal," said Greene. "Now we're in a position to start looking at brain anatomy and understanding how neural mechanisms produce patterns in our behavior."

The study focused on a classic set of problems that have fascinated moral philosophers for years because of the difficulty in identifying moral principles that agree with the way people react.

One dilemma, known as the trolley problem, involves a runaway train that is about to kill five people. The question is whether it is appropriate for a bystander to throw a switch and divert the trolley onto a spur on which it will kill one person and allow the five to survive.

Philosophers compare this problem to a second scenario, sometimes called the footbridge problem, in which a train is again heading toward five people, but there is no spur. Two bystanders are on a bridge above the tracks and the only way to save the five people is for one bystander to push the other in front of the train, killing the fallen bystander.

Both cases involve killing one person to save five, but they evoke very different responses. People tend to agree that it is permissible to flip the switch, but not to push a person off the bridge. People in the study also followed this pattern. This distinction has puzzled philosophers who have not been able to find a hard and fast rule to explain why one is right and the other wrong. For each potential principle, there seems to be another scenario that undermines it.

One reason for the difficulty, said Greene, appears to be that the two problems engage different psychological processes -- some more emotional, some less so -- that rely on different areas of the brain.

"They're very similar problems -- they seem like they are off the same page -- but we appear to approach them in very different ways," said Greene.

Greene emphasized that the researchers were not trying to answer questions about what is right or wrong. Instead, given that people follow a pattern of behavior, the study seeks to describe how that behavior arises. In turn, a better understanding of how moral judgments are made may change our attitudes toward those judgments, Greene said.

The researchers conducted the study with two groups of nine people, who each answered a battery of 60 questions while undergoing MRI scanning. The researchers divided the questions into person and non-personal categories based on the general notion that the difference between the trolley and footbridge problems may have to do with the degree of personal involvement, and ultimately the level of emotional response.

Examples of non-personal ethical dilemmas included a case of keeping money from a lost wallet and a case of voting for a policy expected to cause more deaths than its alternatives. The researchers also included non-moral questions, such as the best way to arrange a travel schedule given certain constraints and which of two coupons to use at a store.

The scanning consistently showed a greater level of activation in emotion-related brain areas during the personal moral questions than during the impersonal moral or non-moral questions. At the same time, areas associated with working memory, which has been linked to ordinary manipulation of information, were considerably less active during the personal moral questions than during the others.

The researchers also measured how long it took subjects to respond to the questions. In the few cases in which people said it is appropriate to take action in the personal moral questions -- like pushing a person off the footbridge -- they tended to take longer to make their decisions. These delays suggest that this subgroup of people were working to overcome a primary emotional response, the researchers said.

Taken together, the imaging and response time results strongly suggest that emotional responses influenced moral decision-making and were not just a coincidental effect, the researchers concluded.

Professor of psychology John Darley, a coauthor of the paper, said the result fits into a growing area of moral psychology which contends that moral decision-making is not a strictly reasoned process, as has been believed for many years. "Moral issues do not come to you with a sign saying 'I'm a moral issue; treat me in a special way,'" Darley said. Instead, they engage a range of mental processes.

Other coauthors on the paper are Brian Sommerville, a former research assistant now at Columbia University Medical School; Leigh Nystrom, a research scientist in psychology; and Jonathan Cohen, a professor of psychology at Princeton.

Cohen also is director of the University's newly established Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, which houses the fMRI scanner used in the study, and which seeks to combine the methods of cognitive psychology with neuroscience.

"Measuring people's behavior has served psychology well for many years and will continue to do so, but now that approach is augmented by a whole new set of tools," said Cohen.

Brain imaging allows scientists to build a catalog of brain areas and their functions, which can then be cross-referenced with behaviors that employ the same processes, Cohen said. Eventually, this combination of behavioral analysis and biological neuroscience could inform questions in fields from philosophy to economics, he said.

The current study, he said, "is a really nice example of how cognitive neuroscience -- and neuroimaging in particular -- provide an interface between the sciences and the humanities."

Who Saw It Coming?
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2001

Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor and the comparison is just. From the point of view of the assailants the attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon the targets.

The Pearl Harbor base containing America's naval might was thought to be invulnerable, yet in half an hour 2000 were dead, and the cream of the fleet destroyed. This week, within an hour on the morning of September 11, security at three different airports was successfully breached, the crews of four large passenger jets efficiently overpowered, the cockpits commandeered, navigation coordinates reset.

In three of the four missions the assailants attained successes probably far beyond the expectations of the planners. As a feat of suicidal aviation the Pentagon kamikaze assault was particularly audacious, with eyewitness accounts describing the Boeing 767 skimming the Potomac before driving right through the low lying Pentagon perimeter, in a sector housing Planning and Logistics. MORE

Words of War
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2001

( Jacob Sullum ) In his first speech on September 11, President Bush called the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center "cowardly acts." By that evening, however, he was calling them "evil, despicable acts of terror," and his second speech contained no reference to cowardice.

Presumably, the president’s speechwriters realized that flying a jumbo jet loaded with fuel into a building was not the act of a coward. A fanatical mass murderer, yes, but not a coward.

One could argue that someone who believes his self-sacrifice is a first-class ticket to paradise is not really being brave when he carries out a suicidal attack. But his determination to serve his cause with no regard to his own personal safety certainly looks brave.

The appearance is unsettling, because bravery is usually considered a virtue, and we are talking about men who committed horrendous crimes. Or did they? Again and again, the pundits and politicians have told us that the destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon should be viewed not as crimes but as "acts of war."

One goal of using that phrase is to suggest that the U.S. government ought to have more latitude in responding to these attacks than police and prosecutors do when they pursue a murderer. There needn’t be an arrest, a trial requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt, or a sentencing in which a carefully weighed punishment is imposed on specific individuals.

If we are indeed at war, we can’t afford such niceties. The Israeli government has made much the same argument in defending its policy (criticized by the United States) of hunting down and killing terrorists, both to punish them for past attacks and to prevent them from striking again.

Once you dispense with the procedures of criminal justice, of course, it may be hard to convince other people that the guy you shot or blew up really was a terrorist who deserved the death penalty. And as Israel has shown on more than one occasion, there is always the risk of accidentally killing the wrong person. MORE

Terrorism, Television and The Rage for Vengeance
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2001

( Norman Solomon ) In his book "1984," George Orwell described the mental dynamics: "The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary."

Secretary of State Colin Powell denounced "people who feel that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose." He was describing the terrorists who had struck his country hours earlier. But Powell was also aptly describing a long line of top officials in Washington.

It would be very unusual to hear a comment about that sort of hypocrisy on any major TV network in the United States. Yet surely U.S. policy-makers have believed that they could "achieve a political purpose" -- with "the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people" -- when launching missiles at Baghdad or Belgrade.

Nor are key national media outlets now doing much to shed light on American assaults that were touted as anti-terrorist "retaliation" -- such as the firing of 13 cruise missiles, one day in August 1998, at the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. That attack, depriving an impoverished country of desperately needed medical drugs, was an atrocity committed (in the words of political analyst Noam Chomsky) "with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably killing tens of thousands of people." MORE

On the Bombings
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2001

( Noam Chomsky ) The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt. The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people. It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom.

The events reveal, dramatically, the foolishness of the project of "missile defense." As has been obvious all along, and pointed out repeatedly by strategic analysts, if anyone wants to cause immense damage in the US, including weapons of mass destruction, they are highly unlikely to launch a missile attack, thus guaranteeing their immediate destruction. There are innumerable easier ways that are basically unstoppable. But today's events will, very likely, be exploited to increase the pressure to develop these systems and put them into place. "Defense" is a thin cover for plans for militarization of space, and with good PR, even the flimsiest arguments will carry some weight among a frightened public.

In short, the crime is a gift to the hard jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their domains. That is even putting aside the likely US actions, and what they will trigger -- possibly more attacks like this one, or worse. The prospects ahead are even more ominous than they appeared to be before the latest atrocities.

As to how to react, we have a choice. We can express justified horror; we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes, which means making an effort to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators. If we choose the latter course, we can do no better, I think, than to listen to the words of Robert Fisk, whose direct knowledge and insight into affairs of the region is unmatched after many years of distinguished reporting. Describing "The wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people," he writes that "this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps." And much more. Again, we have a choice: we may try to understand, or refuse to do so, contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead.

Noam Chomsky

Tragedy in the making for years
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2001

THE EDITOR: I am a Trini who came to NY on Saturday to pursue efforts to get into school, Pace University, to be exact, just three blocks north east of the WTC. I was to meet with a professor today at 2 p.m. to discuss financing arrangements. Just yesterday, I was sitting in Park Plaza and marvelled at the towers which peeked between other buildings in the area. My subway train stop is the WTC on the ‘E’ line.

As I woke up yesterday, I turned on the TV and saw one tower in flames, thinking it was an accident. And then as they are covering the story for Tower 1, I watched this huge jet liner, bank and plunge into Tower 2. I swore it was HBO I was watching.

They showed coverage of the President in a elementary school where he was reading to some youngsters. They showed when a colleague of the President whispered in his ear to tell him what had transpired. It was so sad to see the President’s immediate change of expression—an expression of disbelief and terror, as if asking himself what everyone else is asking: How could this happen?

Watching the Towers collapse was almost as incredible as the actual crashes themselves. One could not believe that the edifice constructed by the great US nation could be felled in one vicious act using US property as the catalyst. Some reports say they managed to evacuate a lot of people in the hour it took for the buildings to come crashing down, but tonight they report that a lot of people are still trapped under the rubble. There are Trinis trapped under there no doubt, so I think we should all pray for their survival or peace for the souls for those who do not survive.

Back home in Trinidad, we have one such oppressive group, as we saw over 11 years ago. If such an event could transpire in the US in 2001 with its abundance of intelligence resources, what can we say for T&T? What would we do if the Twin Towers were bombed? President’s house? Prime Minister’s office?

I’m sure there are people back home chuckling at this event, perhaps because it’s so hard to conceive, but I assure you this is no laughing matter. This situation is the basis for the movie The Siege. That movie showed us what life could be like if these situations persist. No warning, no negotiation, no idea if it this is all to come, no faces to point fingers at. The same fear the US drives into the civilians across the Middle East, Kosovo and the like, is the same fear US citizens are experiencing now. Remember Nostradamus predicted that ‘a major channel to the west will be destroyed by an Arab force’.

I believe this is a tragedy in the making for years. WTC bombing in 1993, Oklahoma City in 1995, Desert Storm, Kosovo, Sarajevo, peace talks in the Mid East.. all these events aggravate these unsavoury characters. And the US is probably the most disliked Western nation in the world.

I was due to stay either three weeks or three months... it’s been three days and I’m ready to come home. I hope BWIA has it’s security in place because it’s going to be a long ride home. And I hope Bee-wee does not still expect people to pay a fee to come home early. And Bee-wee should post some phone numbers for people visiting the US to call for information about the airline, and continue to update their webpage.

RAEFER WESTON

Arafat Donates Blood for U.S. Victims
Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2001

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat donated blood Wednesday for the victims of the terror attacks in New York and Washington while other Palestinians held a vigil in Jerusalem in sympathy with the United States. "God bless them," Arafat said as medical staff prepared to draw his blood in Gaza Shifa hospital. Palestinian officials said his donation would be the start of a blood drive for the casualties of Tuesday's attacks.

It was unclear if arrangements had been made to transfer the blood from Gaza and the West Bank to the United States. Thousands of Israelis donated blood Wednesday, health officials said.

Dozens of Palestinian men, women and children gathered in front of the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, lighting candles and placing flowers along its walls. MORE

What's the Message?
Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2001

The first images from the Middle East following the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks showed Palestinian refugees exulting. However, assuming a Middle East angle to the attacks, there was a more compelling story from the region than what was, for all its crudeness, celebration by a defeated people for a perceived victory against an uncaring foe. The story was that the perpetrators of the attacks offered the U.S. no obvious message as regards its activities in the Middle East.

Particularly since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has had to face frequent and contradictory accusations that it meddles excessively in international affairs, and that it doesn't meddle enough. This paradoxical reaction has been at the heart of Arab displeasure with the Bush administration in recent months. Many Arabs have openly criticized what they deemed overbearing U.S. behavior in the region, particularly towards Iraq, while also demanding a new administration initiative to resolve the ongoing war between Palestinians and Israelis.

This paradox can be easily explained away by the Arabs' desire to see what they consider a more balanced U.S. attitude towards the Palestinians. However, it leads to an absurdity in the case of the airline attacks -- particularly regarding the explanation that they were designed to protest U.S. policy in the Middle East. Arab states may be appalled at U.S. unconcern, but the attackers were in no way demanding greater U.S. involvement in the region. Indeed, exactly the opposite was the case. That was why the U.S. was left deciphering actions that had no clear political objectives.

This alone differentiated Tuesday's hijackings from those organized by Palestinian organizations in the late 1960s and '70s, or militant Islamic movements in the 1980s. The earlier operations were carried out to secure the release of prisoners, earn ransoms, or enhance the political influence of the perpetrators. Their architects not only sought well-defined ends, but also usually were more than eager to identify themselves.

The airline attacks are far more difficult to read. They seem to have no explicit aim, though that did not mean they had no aim whatsoever: The U.S. was humiliated, the president was, for several hours, barred from his own capital and compelled to flee to the security of a Nebraska bunker. The World Trade Center's twin towers and the Pentagon -- bywords for U.S. economic and military might -- were literally demolished. And nightmares of U.S. vulnerability, reminiscent of the science fiction films of the 1950s (themselves representations of the Communist threat), became real. http://reason.com/hod/my091201.html

If you are a reader of right-wing opinion websites, you will by now have heard the voice of the Paleos, loud and strong.

This is a judgment on us for our interventionist foreign policy...

It is time to examine the U.S. relationship with Israel. The lives of every Israeli is not worth one drop of American blood...

Who has reason to hate this country? Only a few hundred million people — Arabs, Muslims, Serbs, and numerous others whose countries have been hit by U.S. bombers...

Nobody is bombing Helsinki or Rome. Nobody is bombing Ottawa or Sydney...

On the day after Pearl Harbor, ex-President Herbert Hoover sat down and wrote to friends: "You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bitten."

Boston: Westin Hotel in the Back Bay bomb scare
Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2001

BOSTON - Broadcast reports say the Westin Hotel in the Back Bay has been evacuated after a bomb sniffing dog made a hit.

And WHDH-TV is reporting one suspect has been taken into police custody at the Boston hotel.

A heavily armed FBI team that's searching for suspects in the terrorism attacks in New York and Washington has stormed the hotel in downtown Boston.

A witness says people are streaming out of the hotel.

And Newton police officer Russ Adam says the FBI is now investigating a hotel on Boylston Street.

Dozens of officers in bulletproof vests and carrying shields could be seen running into the Westin Hotel in the city's Back Bay section.

They were also carrying fiber-optic equipment into the hotel.

WHDH--TV says the officers were using the equipment to check under hotel room doors on hotel's 16th floor. It quoted a person who was inside the hotel.

Two of the planes that were hijacked and used in yesterday's attacks originated in Boston.

A witness says one person taken away in a silver van.

Governor confirms that two suspects flew through Portland
Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2001

PORTLAND, Maine - Two suspects in Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center flew to Boston from the Portland International Jetport, Maine Gov. Angus King said Wednesday.

The two men apparently were using New Jersey driver licenses but little else was known about them, King said. They left behind a rental car with Massachusetts plates that was impounded and hauled to the Maine State Police crime lab.

``This information appears to open up a series of leads that I'm sure will help to identify who the attackers were,'' King told The Associated Press.

King, who spent Tuesday night at the Maine Emergency Management Agency's 24-hour center at Camp Keyes, said he was briefed by state police investigators who were working the FBI, the lead agency in the investigation.

The rental car, a blue Nissan Altima, was identified at 11:30 p.m. in a parking area at the airport, said Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood. MORE

America Under Attack
Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2001

( Woizero Sera'el Tafari ) Yesterday morning, I, like most of the world, sat and watched in awe, as the 'Great' America came under seige.

Again, I watched and listened to the responses of righteous indignation from the various leaders, governmental officials and the ordinary man on the streets of America, condeming this "cowardly act of terrorism on the strongest democratic nation in the world." That this 'evil and merciless' act, was the worst tragedy in the history of the world. BULLSHIT!!!

In watching this scenario unfold in America, the images conjuring in my mind, was that of my African homeland being invaded by a blood-thirsty, EVIL nation, hounding and capturing innocent BLACK people; uprooting them from their homes, their family and loved ones, their stability and sense of security, their FREEDOM.

I watched countless of ones jumping from the fifty-something and upper floors of the World Trade Center, trying to escape from the fury surrounding them; but instead jumping straight to their deaths. In my minds' eye, I saw countless of BLACK people jumping into the Great Ocean, to their deaths, from slave ships herding them off to a life of UNTOLD, UNFELT anguish, despair and sufferation.

I MAKE NO APOLOGIES, but the compassion and mercy that I could have afforded the Great America, is STILL not even enough, for my own people, and other deserving nations, MUCHLESS America.

Life follows the cycle of KARMA: Cause and Effect.

In the REVOLUTIONARY spirit of EQUAL RIGHTS AND JUSTICE,

Woizero Sera'el Tafari

To kill Americans and the allies
Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2001

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is attempting to unravel the events leading to Tuesday's terror attacks in America, with several clues suggesting the involvement of Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden.

Agents were investigating evidence that suspected sympathisers of Mr Bin Laden were operating in Broward County and Daytona Beach in the state of Florida.

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch told The Associated Press that the name of a suspected supporter was found on the passenger list of one of the aircraft.

Also, a report in the Boston Herald said that authorities in Massachusetts had identified at least five Arab men as suspects in the attacks launched from Logan International Airport.

Officers are said to have seized a car laden with Arabic-language flight training manuals from the central parking garage.

Two of the men, whose passports were traced to the United Arab Emirates, were brothers, one of whom was a trained pilot, an unnamed source told the Herald.

The Boston Globe said that the luggage of one of the men, who arrived in Boston on another flight, had been found after it missed his connection.

It contained a Koran, an instructional video on flying commercial airliners and a fuel consumption calculator.

Bin Laden denies US terror attacks
Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2001

Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden has denied responsibility for the terrorist attacks on the United States.

In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper, bin Laden said: "The terrorist act is the action of some American group. I have nothing to do with it."

Bin Laden, who commands Islamic fundamentalists willing to die attacking the US, has been the target of a massive manhunt since 1998 when bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people and injured 4,000.

Bin Laden is believed to live amid tight security near the Taliban's spiritual capital in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar or in the eastern town of Jalalabad, and the Taliban have rebuffed all attempts from abroad to secure his deportation. MORE

Thousands dead in US attacks
Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2001

A grim-faced President Bush has mourned the deaths of thousands of Americans in the country's worst ever terrorist attack, vowing to find those responsible.

"Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror," Mr Bush told the nation on television.

The World Trade Center in New York was destroyed and the Pentagon in Washington seriously damaged when hijacked airliners slammed into them on Tuesday.

"Today our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts," Mr Bush said.

He warned the US would make "no distinction between the terrorists who committed the attacks and those who harbour them".

Arlington County Fire Chief Edward Plaugher, in charge of fighting the fire at the Pentagon, said between 100 and 800 people had died there.

About 265 of the firefighters sent to the World Trade Center initially are now presumed dead, and New York police reported that 85 of their officers were missing. BBC MORE

Race conference adopts declaration
Posted: Saturday, September 8, 2001

(CNN) Charlayne Hunter-Gault said even though the declaration was approved, various countries involved were expressing concerns about parts of it.

Canada said too much attention had been paid to trying to "delegitimise the state of Israel."

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa rejected the paragraph recognising the Holocaust, saying that Europeans were responsible for the genocide and "are trying to spread their guilt around the world."

Hunter-Gault said that in the words of the conference chairwoman, South African foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, "they have arrived at this process all a bit bruised."

Delegates from the 160 countries in Durban had had very little sleep over the last couple of days, she said.

The document was approved by consensus shortly before the plenary session, the final meeting of the conference which went into an unscheduled ninth day because of the deep divisions among the delegates.

The EU and African delegations agreed to acknowledge that slavery is a crime against humanity.

On the issue of compensation, the parties made reference to debt relief and other economic and development assistance to Africa.

"We are happy we found a solution," Hans Winkler, an Austrian delegate, told the Associated Press.

It remained unclear what the new language would mean for European fears of potential lawsuits seeking reparations, though several European delegates told the Associated Press their fears had been addressed.

"It's certainly an issue that warrants further exploration," said Wade Henderson, a lawyer and executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a U.S. organisation, told AP.

Hunter-Gault said that because the conference had gone into an extra and ninth day, many of the countries had left by the time the document was approved. MORE ON CNN

Serena Dominates Hingis
Posted: Friday, September 7, 2001

Serena Williams had the best fastball in New York City.

Williams, the younger half of the US Open's semifinal sister act, served 10 aces in utterly dominating top-seeded Martina Hingis, 6-3, 6-2. The dominant performance puts her back into the US Open final for the second time in her career. Her other trip to the finals resulted in her only Grand Slam tournament championship, in 1999.

To add to the drama, Serena will meet older sister Venus in Saturday's prime time final after Venus beat Jennifer Capriati in the second semifinal Friday.

"I couldn't read her serve," said Hingis at the conclusion of the 51-minute match. "I didn't know if she was going to go backhand or forehand.
Serena just played really smart today."

You needn't be a physician to dissect this afternoon's match, played under gorgeous late-summer skies at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Williams out-aced Hingis 10-0 while not committing a double-fault. In the second Williams got all 17 of her first serves in, winning 16 of those points.

"I can't serve any better than that," said Williams. "I didn't imagine in my wildest dreams that it would be 100%."

Williams was just as deft returning serves. Hingis recorded no aces during the match and Williams converted all five of her break-point opportunities. Indeed, it seemed as if Hingis, playing in her sixth consecutive U.S. Open as the top seed (italics) and (end ital) a semifinalist, was playing defense the entire hour. Williams, mixing superior power with a newfound patience, recorded 40 winners to Hingis's eight.

For fifteen minutes at least, it appeared that the match had the chance of replicating last January's quarterfinal at the Australian Open, where Hingis outlasted Williams in three sets. Williams broke Hingis' serve in the second game to go up 2-0, but the Czech broke right back to trail by only a game. Williams was unbloodied by that punch, though, breaking Hingis right back in the very next game. Serving at 5-3 in the opening set, Williams closed Hingis out at love, her last three points coming off either an ace or a service winner.

In the second set Williams, the 1999 Open champion but the 10th seed this year, was even more dominant. While Hingis, one of the great tacticians
in the game, played flawlessly, committing only three unforced errors, Williams was just as patient. The difference was her ability to crush winner after winner against a visibly overpowered Hingis. Williams outwinnered Hingis, the only player to ever defeat both Serena and older sister Venus at a Grand Slam (2001 Australian Open), by a margin of 21-2.

Williams's victory continues the unlikely success of 10th seeds at this year's Open. In the men's draw four-time Open champ Pete Sampras, who
will play in one semi tomorrow, is the 10 seed. In the distaff draw it is Williams.

"For someone with my name to be number 10 is pretty absurd," she said.

Two years ago on this same weekend in New York City, Martinez, baseball's premier pitcher, came within one hit of pitching a no-hitter versus the Yankees. A day later Serena Williams won the US Open, the first and still only Grand Slam title of her career. Friday, Serena Williams closed out the match with four straight serves, not one of which was returned by Hingis, to win the final game at love. It was the exclamation mark, that last game, to what may be the most dominant performance in the Big Apple since Martinez's masterpiece.

Venus Outslugs Capriati
Posted: Friday, September 7, 2001

Fourth-seeded Venus Williams outslugged No. 2 seed Jennifer Capriati in straight sets Friday to set up a Saturday night prime-time championship encounter against her younger sister, Serena, who earlier in the afternoon demolished top-seeded Martina Hingis.

In an epic, 51-minute first set, Capriati broke Williams in the second game and quickly ran up a lead of 3-0. But after the players split the next two games to take the score to 4-1, Williams won five games in a row to take the set. Serving for the set at 5-4, Venus survived eight deuces against Capriati and finally took the set on her fourth set point. Williams hit 13 winners and 31 unforced errors in the set, and Capriati had only two winners but committed 21 unforced errors.

Capriati hit a volley into the net at break point in the first game of the 30-minute second set. It was the only opening Williams needed; her serve, which reached speeds as high as 119 mph, was never broken in the second set. Williams broke Capriati again up 4-2, when Capriati knocked a slice volley wide. Williams then served out the match, with Capriati netting a backhand at match point.

Europe 'to apologise for slavery'
Posted: Friday, September 7, 2001

European delegates at the United Nations anti-racism conference in Durban have agreed to apologise for the slave trade, South Africa says.

European nations among those deemed to have benefited from the slave trade will offer an apology for slavery "from a moral perspective," Dr Sipho Pityana of South Africa's Foreign Ministry said.

Mr Pityna said this formulation would not imply any legal liability for slavery, so those making the apology would not be liable to pay reparations.

A week of talks in Durban - which were due to end on Friday afternoon - has been marked by bitter rows over African demands for reparations for slavery and rows over Israel and racism.

The US and Europe have been refusing to apologise for the slave trade because they feared they would then become legally bound to pay huge sums in compensation to African countries. BBC More

Zimbabwe commits to land deal
Posted: Friday, September 7, 2001

Zimbabwe has committed itself to a Commonwealth-brokered deal to end the violent occupation of white-owned farms by restoring the rule of law.

Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge said the government would pay "full and fair" compensation for any land it transfers from white farmers to poor blacks - so long as the former colonial power Britain and other countries fulfil promises to fund the programme.

The deal, signed in Nigeria, came after African nations added their voices to international concern about the situation in Zimbabwe.

The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) welcomed the agreement, saying it could restore peace and justice in Zimbabwe.

Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon also welcomed the deal in principle, but warned: "It is a matter now of ensuring implementation of the deal and that means a greater grip on the rule of law." BBC More

Americans Remain Slaves to the Past
Posted: Friday, September 7, 2001

(Mail & Guardian Johannesburg) Slavery is America's incubus. It made racist hypocrites of the founding fathers who drafted a Constitution and Bill of Rights that proclaimed individual liberties for all as long as they were white, knowing exactly what they were doing. It disfigured American society for 250 years while it was practised, and for another 100 years after it was banned because North and South alike turned a blind eye to the idea of "separate development" in the old Confederacy ñ the suffocating discrimination of the Jim Crow laws that denied southern blacks civil and social rights.

Its legacy hangs over every American inner city and every exchange between black and white. With the Democrats now agreeing they will champion up to $440-billion of reparations, slavery and its fall-out promises to become the hottest, most contentious issue in American politics.

The 1960s civil rights movement brought the curtain down on the world of Jim Crow, and 30 years of affirmative action has tried to redress the position. Bill Clinton apologised, but still the issue has lost none of its sting.

The Democrats' last-minute conversion a fortnight ago was acutely judged. The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations America (N'Cobra) has been lobbying for an investigation into slavery and then legislation for reparations for years and has launched a suit against the government. But the United Nations Conference on Racism (WCAR) was the catalyst.

The Bush administration's position is easy to portray as racist, but there is also hard cash at issue. Any US government signature on an international declaration even remotely agreeing to reparations in principle will damage its defence to N'Cobra's suit in court ñ maybe make it impossible. But the politics are deadly; the Democrats can confirm their black support, and the Republicans emerge as the racists.

The sums at stake are enormous. If every American black got $50 000, the gross bill would be around $435-billion (R3 624-billion). In the context of a 10-year tax cut of $1,4-trillion, this is affordable ñ just ñ but it would be the largest reparations payment in history.

But reparations on this scale are not without precedent. Half a dozen Indian tribes have won reparations from the government over the past 20 years; and the tobacco industry has had to accept a $206-billion liability after a protracted lawsuit. MORE

Zimbabwe land reform breakthrough
Posted: Thursday, September 6, 2001

The government in Zimbabwe has agreed to take sweeping measures to curb the occupation of white-owned farms and violence against farmers and their workers.

A statement released after a Commonwealth foreign ministers meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, announced that in return, Zimbabwe would receive funding for its land redistribution programme. The statement said that President Robert Mugabe's government agreed to observe the rule of law when redistributing land from white farmers to landless black Zimbabweans.

The Nigerian foreign minister hailed the agreement as a "breakthrough", but UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "Ultimately, whether it represents real progress will depend on events on the ground and that can only be judged in the future." Zimbabwe has also agreed to allow close monitoring of the human rights situation in the country, and of its presidential election, due for next year. MORE

US struggles with slavery's legacy
Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2001

On the outskirts of Charleston in South Carolina, on a thousand acres of steamy wooded land stands majestic Drayton Hall.

It is just one of many plantations built by the sweat of West African slaves.

But slaves didn't just build plantations. As Drayton Hall's director, historian, George McDaniel points out, until its abolition in 1865, slavery helped turn a colonial backwater into a major economic power.

"The contribution of African Americans to the economy of America, inclusive of the Old South, was tremendous. The plantation society of the Old South was based on slave labour."

"The industry that developed in the North, the cotton mills in the 19th Century, as well as much of the industry in England itself, was grounded in slavery and forced labour," he said.

"It would be impossible to extract from history the results of African American slavery," he added.

Now almost 140 years since the end of slavery many African Americans believe there is a debt to be paid. MORE

Racism 'helping spread of Aids'
Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2001

The head of the United Nations' Aids programme has told the world racism conference in South Africa that racial prejudice is helping the spread of the disease around the world.

Dr Peter Piot told delegates gathered in Durban if the Aids epidemic had centred on Europe, rather than Africa, and had affected predominantly white people, the response to it would have been faster and more generous.

Dr Piot called on countries attending the conference to adopt legislation banning discrimination against HIV sufferers.

There are about 36 million people infected with HIV around the world, 25.3 of whom live in Africa, according to Dr Piot's UNAIDS organisation.

"When we think of Aids, it's Africans, black people and so in that sense there is probably that racist underground," Dr Piot told a round table meeting.

Dr Piot said laws against prejudice and AIDS should encourage sufferers to feel safe in publicly revealing their infection.

"Why would you come out if you may lose your house, you may lose your job, your husband or wife throws you out, you may be stoned to death?" asked Dr Piot.

The BBC's Elizabeth Blunt in Durban says one problem in the fight against Aids is that few countries have the statistics which can reveal racial differences in the incidence of Aids and the care of sufferers.

A speaker from the World Health Organisation accepted there might be fears that collecting racially based statistics would increase prejudice, but said as long as there were groups exposed to discrimination it was important to monitor their well-being.

Our correspondent says racism in the form of apartheid has led to southern Africa having the world's highest levels of infection.

Multiple Evolutionary "Jumps" Drive Drosophila Diversification
Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2001

Source: University Of Arkansas (http://www.uark.edu)

Multiple Evolutionary "Jumps" Drive Drosophila Diversification, University Of Arkansas Researcher Finds

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- A University of Arkansas researcher has compared the family trees of fruit flies and their host cacti and found that evolutionary "jumps" to different types of plant hosts have occurred throughout time, suggesting that ecological specialization can occur repeatedly from the same species pool.
William Etges, associate professor of biological sciences, will present his findings at the Eighth Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arhus, Denmark, this week.

Because fruit flies have diversified into thousands of species, reproduce quickly and create many generations in a short time, scientists use them to study evolution, population genetics and diversification.

"The large question is what drives diversification," Etges said, "And why some insect groups are ecological specialists while others are generalists."

Etges and his colleagues study the genetic evolution of a subset of fruit flies in the Drosophila repleta group that breed and feed on cactuses in North and South America. They have examined the genetic "family tree" of about half of the 100 or so cactophilic species, searching for clues to understanding how the relationship between the insects and the plants might drive diversity.

When they compared the genetic history of these insects with the evolutionary history of the cacti, they found a correlation between the two. The flies appear to have started exploiting Opuntia cactus, one of the most ancestral varieties, perhaps 30 million years ago. They spread to taller columnar cactus species as those came into existence.

Furthermore, throughout the fly family tree, he found several places where fly species have "jumped," or quickly evolved from eating one kind of cactus to another. MORE

Fiji: George Speight has been elected to parliament
Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2001

The man who led last year's attempted coup in Fiji, George Speight, has been elected to parliament in the country's general election.

Mr Speight, who ran his campaign from an island prison where he is awaiting trial for treason, won in Tailevu North, a stronghold of his support during the rebellion.

It is not yet clear whether Mr Speight will be allowed to take up his seat. Hours before his victory he had appeared in court on minor charges relating to his part in the coup.

Also elected to parliament was the man Mr Speight deposed - Fiji's former ethnic Indian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.

Election officials said Mr Chaudhry - the first prime minister from Fiji's large ethnic Indian minority - took his constituency by a two-thirds majority. http://www.fijilive.com/

Brainwashing ads can change our childhood
Posted: Tuesday, September 4, 2001

Psychologists say adverts can alter people's childhood memories, making them recall events that never happened.

Volunteers have been shown a mock-up advert in which Disney World visitors shake hands with a Bugs Bunny character.

The subjects ended up believing they had done the same on a visit there, even though Bugs Bunny isn't a Disney character.

Researchers, led by Professor Elizabeth Loftus at the University of Washington in Seattle, said: "We found that autobiographically-focused advertising can make events seem more likely to have happened to them as children."

One soft-drink manufacturer in the US has discovered many adults remember growing up drinking its product from bottles even though full-scale distribution only began 10 years ago.

The findings were presented today at the British Association annual science festival taking place at Glasgow University.

World should intervene to end the Israeli Apartheid
Posted: Tuesday, September 4, 2001

(Hanan Ashrawi) From Jerusalem, from the heart of Palestine, a land besieged, and repeatedly violated by a most brutal Israeli military occupation, I have come to join you today. From the midst of the people of Palestine, a tortured nation, guilty only of an unwavering commitment to freedom, dignity, and independence, I have come to join you today. From the depths of unredeemed history, I have come to join you today. I represent a narrative of exclusion, denial, racism, and national victimization, but I also come with a message of hope, redemption, and historical vindication embodied in the spirit and the will of a people that has refused to succumb to all forces of oppression, violence, cruelty, and injustice.

In convening this conference, you are the authentic embodiment of courage in withstanding the forces of domination, subjugation, and enslavement.

We stand together today to launch a truly global mission of empowerment and solidarity, to give voice to the "silenced," to give a reality to the "invisible," to give recognition to the "denied," and to give credence to the victimized.

In times of adversity, and during the darkest nights of the soul, we look to you for affirmation and action as an antidote to the failure of established power systems, including governments - a failure characterized by self-interest, power politics, absence of will, and impotence. I take this opportunity to recognize before you those valiant men and women who had left the comfort of their homes in Europe and the US and joined us in Palestine to provide popular protection, a "human shield" in the face of Israeli abuses, violence, and violations against the Palestinian people.

I come to you today with a heavy heart leaving behind a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing "Nakba" [catastrophe], as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism, and victimization.

More than half a century ago [53 years], the Palestinians as a people were slated for national obliteration, cast outside the course of history, their identity denied, and their very human cultural and historical reality suppressed. We became victims of the myth of "a land without a people for people without a land" whereby the West sought to assuage its guilt over its horrendous anti-Semitism by the total victimization of a whole nation. Zionism sought to implement its agenda of exclusivity by usurping not only the lands and rights of the Palestinians, but also by confiscating their utterance and distorting their historical narrative. More

US accused over summit walkout
Posted: Tuesday, September 4, 2001

Delegations to the UN racism conference in South Africa are battling to save it after a walkout by the US and Israel over moves to brand Israel as racist.

The Americans, followed by Israel, pulled out on Monday after failing to have "hateful" language about the Jewish state removed from meeting documents.

Senior Palestinian officials reacted by claiming victory over Israel and accusing the Americans of backing what they termed Israeli aggression.

Human rights groups and the host nation, South Africa, have accused the US of leaving Durban without really tackling racism.

European delegates - who like Canada expressed sympathy for the US stance but did not follow their lead - are working to draft a "completely new text" on the Middle East conflict.

"But that does not mean that we are necessarily going to have anything approaching an agreed text on Tuesday," an EU spokesman said. More

(Guardian UK) It was billed as the conference where humanity would begin to heal itself, and everyone agreed that South Africa was the ideal location. What better place for the inspiration to make an anti-racism conference work than the land that produced Nelson Mandela and buried apartheid?
But last night accusations of racism were rippling through the UN Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance as the meeting degenerated into recrimination and bitterness.

The Americans and Israelis walked out saying that the conference had become a "cesspool of racism" with the revival of the old charge that Zionism is racism, and some straightforward but virulent anti-semitism.

South Africa responded by stopping just short of calling President George Bush a racist, but it did say he was not an anti-racist.

The British are not much more popular in Pretoria for their stubborn stand against issuing an outright apology for the transatlantic slave trade, a position many in Africa see as motivated by old prejudices. More

OUT NOW! Palestinians and Israeli Conflict
Posted: Monday, September 3, 2001

(Tanya Reinhart) In contrast to the spirit of blood and revenge which is now dominating the Israeli public discourse, there has been for years a wide consensus in the Israeli society that peace with the Palestinians requires withdrawal from the occupied territories and evacuation of settlements. Many of the withdrawal supporters got indeed confused and paralyzed by the massive propaganda about the far reaching concessions which Barak supposedly offered and which the Palestinians rejected. But a process of sobering up has began. (According to a poll published in Ha'aretz, July 4, 2001, 40% of the Israelis support the evacuation of ALL settlements; 52% support forceful evacuation of part of the settlements in a unilateral withdrawal.) Many other will join when they realize that the alternative is, at best, a return to the pre-Oslo days: two months of reserve service every year and horrible terror attacks.

Despite the wide support, implementation of this sensible plan seems further away every year. Since Oslo, the dream of peace was replaced by the myth of negotiations. We are facing difficult and complex problems - so the Oslo myth has been going - which require years, maybe generations, of negotiations. And until the whole deal is agreed upon, it is impossible to evacuate even one tiny settlement. Shortly after Oslo, Labor MP Haggai Merom tried to organize evacuation with compensation for the settlers who were willing to evacuate. Thousands enrolled in the office he opened. But prime minister Rabin announced: not now! Since then, the number of settlers doubled from 100.000 to almost 200.000, and the negotiations only became more and more entangled and complicated.

This route has failed. Even if Arafat will agree to resume the road of eternal 'negotiations' (as some of the Israeli doves are urging him to do), we have lost the faith of the Palestinian people, who are not willing anymore to listen to vague promises about a future which never materializes, while they watch more and more of their lands being taken by the settlers. The lesson is clear. For true negotiations, we must first withdraw - as we did in Lebanon. It is astounding how simple it is to do this. Most of the occupied territories can be evacuated immediately, within two or three months. MORE

"THE SECOND HALF OF 48" THE SHARON-YA'ALON PLAN

PALESTINE: PRESENT AND CLEAR REALITY By Edward W. Said

Age Of Menopause Dictated Largely By Genes
Posted: Monday, September 3, 2001

Source: European Society For Human Reproduction And Embryology (http://www.eshre.com/)

The age at which a woman reaches menopause is 85% genetically determined, according to new research published today (Thursday 30 August) in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal, Human Reproduction.
A woman with a family history of early menopause is herself likely to have an early menopause and consequently early reproductive failure, concludes the team of Dutch researchers who have carried out the world's first study in non-twin sisters of the genetic factors involved in natural menopause.

As the age of menopause is a retrospective marker for a woman's reproductive capacity in the years beforehand, the research team believes that finding that heritability plays such a major role in determining the menopause has important implications for women when childbirth is being delayed well beyond the age of 30. It was this social phenomenon that prompted them to undertake the project.

The teams, from centres in Utrecht and Wageningen, collected data from 243 non-twin sisters in 118 families among a random population sample participating in a breast cancer screening project that had begun in the 1970s. They also collected data from 22 non-identical and 37 identical twins. In the breast cancer screening study all the women had agreed to provide extensive information about their health, their families and reproductive history for compilation on a database designed for research purposes.

Using three different analytical models the researchers established nearly identical results: for non-twin sisters the age at which they reached menopause was 85-87% down to genetic factors. In twins it was 70-71% - a figure which was not statistically significantly different from that of the non-twin sisters.

Research leader, Dr Jan-Peter de Bruin, from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht, said that they had undertaken the project because they saw a serious social problem emerging with women delaying the age at which they have their first child.

"The increasing age at which women become pregnant with their first child is one of the most remarkable demographic changes in the last 30 to 40 years. More and more women will face involuntary childlessness if this trend keeps going," he said. "A woman with one or more first degree relatives with a history of early menopause is liable to experience earlier menopause herself. Further, this same woman is also expected to start becoming less fertile and to be completely infertile at an earlier age, thus being at greatly increased risk of remaining childless if she delays childbearing." More

West 'is failing racism conference'
Posted: Sunday, September 2, 2001

(BBC) The host of the UN conference on racism in Durban, President Thabu Mbeki of South Africa, has accused Western states of not taking it seriously.

He said the US and Europe's former colonial powers had sent the wrong message by dispatching only junior delegations.

Mr Mbeki's criticisms came as the US and Israeli delegations threatened to walk out over what they say is discrimination against Israel.

However, moves by Norway for a compromise declaration may yet calm emotions.

Mr Mbeki told the Reuters news agency that the US was responsible for letting the Middle East dominate the conference.

The US had "aggressively lobbied" on Israel's behalf in the run-up to the conference and delegates had been "forced to make statements in order to assert which side they are on in this particular debate".

Having caused so much friction, Mr Mbeki said, Washington could not just announce: "Well, I'm not going to come".

A member of the US delegation, Democrat Congressman Tom Lantos, said that the US was likely to walk out if the row over the Middle East issue was not resolved "in 24 to 36 hours". More

Fidel Castro has supported the call for reparations
Posted: Saturday, September 1, 2001

( ABSTRACT BBC: ) African leaders at the international conference on racism in the South African city of Durban have agreed that the West must apologise for slavery and colonialism, but are still divided over the issue of reparations.

One of the speakers at the conference, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, has come out against reparations.

Mr Obasanjo told the delegates an apology would recognise the wrong that was committed against Africans and constitute a promise that such an atrocity would never happen again.

With an apology, "the issue of reparations ceases to be a rational option", he said during his formal address to the conference on Saturday morning.

But the President of Togo, Gnassingbe Eyadema, said reparations were necessary to compensate for the horrors of the slave trade and colonialism.

Africans and people of African descent have noted that compensation is now being paid to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their descendents.

They are demanding the same kind of reparations for the descendents of those who were enslaved because they were black.

Reparations could come in the form of a cancellation of African debt and greater development aid, some African delegates hope.

Cuban President Fidel Castro has supported the call for reparations, saying that countries that made money through human trafficking could afford to pay.

"This is an unavoidable moral duty," Mr Castro said.

The Cuban leader criticised the US for lowering the level of its delegation at the conference because of the discussion of what he called Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

"(Nobody) has the right to set preconditions to the conference or urge it to avoid the discussion...(of) the way we decide to rate the dreadful genocide perpetrated, at this very moment, against our Palestinian brothers," Mr Castro said.

UN concern over Afghan refugee plan
Posted: Saturday, September 1, 2001

(BBC) The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has expressed concern about a plan to send 460 mainly Afghan refugees, currently on board a Norwegian cargo ship off Australia, to New Zealand and Nauru.

The plan was announced on Saturday by Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it was not an ideal situation but was a "compromise solution".

Under the deal, the refugees will be taken thousands of kilometres from where they are currently located.to New Zealand and the Pacific island state of Nauru, where their application claims will be processed.

Australia will meet the costs of the operation, and has agreed to take some of the refugees, if their claims are judged genuine.

A spokesman for the UNHCR said on Saturday that the refugee agency preferred the plan it had put forward, under which the refugees would disembark and be processed at Australia's Christmas Island. More

Australia announced deal with New Zealand on refugees
Posted: Saturday, September 1, 2001

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has announced a deal which would allow more than 400 refugees stranded on a Norwegian ship to land and apply for asylum.

Under the deal, the people will be taken to New Zealand and the Pacific Island state of Nauru, where their application claims would be processed.

Australia will meet the costs of the operation, and has agreed to take some of the refugees, if their claims are judged genuine.

Mr Howard's government has been firmly opposed to allowing the refugees to land and apply for asylum in Australia.

Public opinion in Australia has largely supported Mr Howard's position.

"This does not involve the people being taken onto Christmas Island or any other Australian territory," said Mr Howard.

He added that Australia would step up military patrols, by sea and air, of the ocean between it and Indonesia, with immediate effect.
Australian Immigration Department

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