...............................................................................................

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2003-daily/28-04-2003/world/w12.html

WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld plans to offer the top army post to General Tommy Franks, who led coalition forces to victory in Iraq, according to a report here.

Secretary of the Army Thomas White announced his resignation abruptly on Friday after a meeting with Rumsfeld and Deputy US Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. A brief Pentagon statement announcing the departure offered no explanation and did not say when it would take place. Now Rumsfeld, who has clashed with top Army leadership due to his drive to streamline the force, wants to offer Franks the job, according to Knight Ridder Newspapers.

If Franks accepts, Rumsfeld would appoint Franks's deputy, Lieutenant General John Abizaid, to take over for him at US Central Command, the report said, citing Pentagon officials.

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http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=248114&lang=e&dir=news

Iraqi civilians are preparing to take US commander Gen. Tommy Franks to court in Belgium, accusing him and other US military officials of war crimes in Iraq, it was reported Monday. The complaint will say US-British forces are responsible for the indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians, the bombing of a Baghdad market, the shooting of an ambulance and the failure to stop hospitals being looted, said Jan Fermon, a Brussels-based lawyer.

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http://truthout.org/docs_03/042803D.shtml

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fired Army Secretary Thomas White, whose tenure as civilian chief of the military's largest service was marked by tensions with his boss, a Pentagon official said Saturday... Rumsfeld told White he wanted to steer the Army in a new direction.

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http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=248112&lang=e&dir=news

The U.S.-led war in Iraq was a historic success that will influence military spending and doctrine for decades, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told cheering troops Monday.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,944831,00.html

Unexploded ordnance and landmines littering northern Iraq have killed or maimed more people - many of them children - since the end of the war than during the fighting, a Guardian investigation has revealed.

In the two weeks after the cessation of hostilities on the northern frontline, which divided the Kurdish self-rule area from government-controlled territory, as many as 80 civilians have died and more than 500 have been injured. "We are facing an emergency situation," said Sean Sutton of the UK-based Mines Advisory Group, which is coordinating an operation in the region to clear unexploded ordnance and mines... with more than 300 dead or injured so far, the population of Kirkuk appears to have suffered the most. The Guardian was told of 44 deaths caused by landmines or unexploded ordnance in the five days after the collapse of the city on April 9. And, on April 15, 17 people were killed and three injured in one blast in the district of Dibs. They were reportedly trying to take scrap from unexploded shells.

...Mr Sutton said the Mines Advisory Group had also found evidence of a new type of American cluster bomb dropped outside the city.

The BLU 108, he explained, is an anti-armour bomblet with a sensor. When the mother unit is dropped it spews out four smaller units with parachutes. Each of these then slings out four lethal circular discs. "These should be directed toward armour," Mr Sutton said. "But we found them in fields. And 75% of them were unexploded."

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http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030426/3/3ahh0.html

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Many Iraqi civilians are feared killed after an arms dump exploded on the edge of Baghdad, sending rockets scything into nearby housing. Residents blame U.S. troops for the tragedy. The American military said on Saturday unidentified attackers had fired an incendiary device into the munitions store, at Zaafaraniya on the capital's southern outskirts, setting off a string of explosions. But local people turned their anger on the Americans, shooting at soldiers who tried to join relief efforts. They said the U.S. army should not have collected confiscated Iraqi weapons in a residential area.

...It was unclear how many people were killed in the blasts in Zaafaraniya, a mixed residential-industrial suburb. An Iraqi medic travelling in a civilian ambulance ferrying casualties to hospital said the explosions had killed many people. Asked how many, he replied: "Forty". One distraught man, Tamir Kalaal, said his wife, father, brother and 11 other relatives had been killed when a rocket shot out of the arms dump and destroyed their home. A statement by U.S. Central Command in Qatar said ..."Ten civilian casualties from this incident have been found. Six of them are dead, while four are wounded."

About 500 men, chanting anti-American, pro-Islamic slogans, drove out of Zaafaraniya in a convoy of trucks, buses and cars. One truck carried six coffins. Two banners in English read: "Stop Explosions Near Civilians" and "The Terror After War". Later, scores of men gathered in a central Baghdad square to protest at the U.S. military presence in Iraq, waving their fists and chanting: "Yes, yes to Islam! Yes, yes to Iraq!" ...One green banner read: "U.S. forces kill innocent with Saddam's weapons in Zaafaraniya".

The incident... came just hours after aides said President George W. Bush would declare an end to hostilities next week and hail the success of U.S.-led combat operations. Saddam, his sons Uday and Qusay and many of his closest aides are still missing and no weapons of mass destruction... have been found.

...The explosions at Zaafaraniya, which began just after 8 a.m. (0400 GMT), were so loud they could be heard in central Baghdad. U.S. troops in the city centre told reporters initially they were controlled detonations, but later the American military said they were the result of an attack.

In many parts of Iraq it was still far from clear on Saturday who was in control. Shi'ite Muslim clerics are running the holy Iraqi city of Najaf without consulting U.S.-led forces camped outside, a spokesman for the leader of one Shi'ite group said on Friday. But U.S. troops on the outskirts said they were consulting a retired Iraqi army colonel who had been appointed mayor.

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http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030426/3/3ahhh.html

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - The love affair between U.S. troops and Iraqi children is turning sour... This correspondent, who has travelled with U.S. troops since the start of the war, has seen more and more of the encounters ending with some children, usually the older ones in their early teens, hurling stones at the soldiers.

..."It's frustrating. They're like little gnats that you can't get away," said Captain James McGahey, a company commander of the 101st Airborne Division who says almost every one of the patrols he sends out in the northern city of Mosul gets stoned... The problem is not confined to Mosul. Crowds of 250-300 Iraqi teenagers hurled stones at U.S. Marines patrolling the holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq on Thursday and Friday, officers said. In Kerbala earlier this month, a group of children threw rocks and then kicked puppies over a wall and into a compound where U.S. troops were camped.

...There is much less sharing of sweets or pencils because it encourages more children to swarm in. "We call them seagulls because if you give one seagull a piece of bread, the next minute you'll have a whole flock of them," one soldier said.

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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12892681&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=FURY%20AS%20US%20STRIPS%20THIEVES

AMERICA was at the centre of a new human rights row last night after four alleged Iraqi thieves were paraded naked in a Baghdad park by US troops. The degraded prisoners had the words "Ali Baba, Haram'' - "Thief, Unclean" - scrawled in Arabic on their chests. The humiliating spectacle of young men running to hide their shame was captured by a photographer for Norway's Dagbladet newspaper, which quoted a US officer as saying the deterrent was effective... The four victims had their clothes burned before being publicly humiliated... The US soldiers were seen chasing the Iraqi men shouting "Ali Baba, Ali Baba". All four ran as fast as they could... Three of the young men got away but 20-year-old Zian Djumma came back with his head bowed down after he put on grey shorts which he found in a looted house. He told Dagbladet: "This was terrible. Now I only want to go home and find a hand grenade and throw it at the soldiers. Not only against those who did it to us but at everybody. I hate the Americans for this.''

Djumma said the four friends had gone into the park through an open gate looking for a missing 15-year-old boy. But the Americans said the four were carrying a bag with spare parts for weapons.

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see front-page photo

http://www.truthout.com/

caption: BAGHDAD -- April 18, 2003 | US Marines place duct tape over the mouth of an Iraqi man. Next they will put a bag over his head and take him away. As of this date Bush administration officials continue to insist in U.S. commercial media broadcasts that that this is liberation, not occupation. (AP Photo)

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2977103.stm

While the United States vigorously searches for former members of the Iraqi regime, it still has not decided what to do with those it has caught. One thing is certain. The Americans will not send them to the International Criminal Court or set up any new international tribunal. That is something to which the Bush administration is ideologically opposed. Instead, US officials have said that American military or civilian courts will deal with those accused of crimes against American citizens.

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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/04/26/MN36580.DTL

Kut, Iraq -- Said Abbas sat in the governor's chair, signed papers as the governor, gave speeches as the governor, even had a governor's assistant... making it impossible for the Marines to consolidate power and get Kut running again. So on Friday, Abbas was given an ultimatum: Face arrest or leave. Not long before the Marines stormed City Hall, Abbas slipped out the back door.

...He said he was elected, or selected, by his neighbors in the Shiite community because he is a humanitarian... The Marines said he was a "thug" trying to consolidate power and enrich his friends... Whatever the truth is about the cleric, who is affiliated with the Iran- based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, he was undeniably an embarrassment to the Americans, a symbol of their failure to fill a power vacuum that rose in Iraq when Saddam Hussein fell.

..."This is an American-British occupation, which is humiliating," Said Abu al Hail, 40, said as news of Abbas' departure spread. "They said they are going to liberate the people and let them govern themselves. When?"

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2980381.stm

US soldiers have arrested a self-proclaimed "mayor" of Baghdad, Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi. US military officials accuse him of trying to sabotage coalition efforts to restore basic services... News of his arrest came on the eve of a key meeting to be hosted by Jay Garner, the former US general tasked with setting up an interim administration for Iraq... Mr Garner's first attempt to bring together possible future members of an administration was a shambles, with only 80 people turning up for the talks in Nasiriya. It is hoped that 300 delegates will attend Monday's session, though protests are expected and key groups representing the majority Shia population may again boycott.

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http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2637134

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Up to one million Iraqi civil servants returning to work under a U.S. civil administration could qualify for a one-off $20 payment each within a week, a U.S. official said on Sunday. Accountants from Saddam Hussein's former government were set to deliver documents on Monday that could allow payments to 650,000 workers, mainly in central Iraq, the official told Reuters on the sidelines of a U.S. briefing on the Iraqi economy. "That's a big bite of the elephant right there," he said of the huge task facing U.S. administrators trying to get what they estimate could be 2.5 million government workers onto a new payroll. U.S. administrators have already given $20 payments -- mainly in single dollar bills -- to thousands of workers in southern Iraq and Baghdad.

...The U.S. administration wants to ensure no Saddam loyalists or die-hard members of his Baath Party are re-employed in government jobs.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/27/1051381854136.html

The United States-led coalition will recruit officials from Saddam Hussein's deposed regime in an attempt to speed up the restoration of essential services. The team will be given temporary control of the 23 government ministries that operated under the old regime, pending the formation of an Iraqi interim administration... The job of re-establishing the public service is complicated by the offices of most of the national ministries in Baghdad having been wrecked by coalition air strikes or looters.

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http://icnorthernireland.icnetwork.co.uk/news/iraq/page.cfm?objectid=12881298&method=full&siteid=66002&headline=What's%20with%20All%20the%20Dollars%3F

Piles of American currency, hundreds of millions of dollars so far, are being found in Iraq, even though the country has been under economic sanctions for nearly 13 years.

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http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=84958

Unicef has reported an outbreak of Black Fever and other diseases in Iraq, in which children will be the biggest victims, because of the lack of clean water and health care, coupled with a breakdown of all civic services. The organisation has received reports of six fatalities from Black Fever and an increase in the number of those infected all around the south of Iraq.

A dramatic increase in diarrhoea has also been recorded with 50 cases reported in one day alone in some parts of the country. In some children's hospitals, 70 per cent of patients are suffering from diarrhoea in a country where half of the population is below 18 years, said Rawhi Abeido, a spokesman for Unicef. The situation is expected to worsen with the rising temperatures... Further complicating the situation is that the chlorine factory in Basra, which supplied the south, has been burnt down.

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http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/mon/apr28w15.htm

CAMP BUCCA, Iraq (AFP) - Some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were released Sunday from this coalition camp, many of them chanting "we love Bush" and clapping as they rode out on buses headed for the southern city of Basra... A Pentagon spokesman said earlier this month that US military tribunals in Iraq had begun deciding the status of some 6,850 people taken prisoner during the war. Those who can prove that they are civilians are transported back to their communities and released, US officers at POW camps added. The others are sorted into one of two categories: Enemy Prisoner of War or unlawful combatant, they said. The first comprises soldiers who fought in uniform, while the latter covers all others - including the notorious Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary force and armed Baath party members.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4653978,00.html

Children younger than 16 are being held as "enemy combatants" in the American detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, the US military admitted... Three boys aged between 13 and 15... had been brought from Afghanistan this year on suspicion of terrorism... As soon as their ages were confirmed in medical tests, the children were moved to a "dedicated juvenile facility" at the camp... "They are in a secure environment free from the influences of older detainees," [Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a spokesman at the base said. "They are receiving specialist mental health care, in recognition of the difficult circumstances that child combatants go through, and some basic education in terms of reading and writing." ...But the children would still be held indefinitely and would not be granted access to lawyers, he said, because the US continues to view them as "enemy combatants" - a term it has used to argue that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the inmates, who have not been charged with any crimes. That would be the case "until we ensure that they're no longer a threat to the United States..."

...The United States and Somalia are the only member states of the United Nations no to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

...The US court of appeals ruled last month that the government was entitled to deny due legal process to the detainees because they are not Americans and are not being held on US territory. The three boys are not the only inmates under 16 to have been brought to Guantanamo Bay. Canadian officials have been seeking for months to gain access to Omar al-Khadr, a Canadian national who they say is being held at Camp Delta after being captured on July 27 during fighting in eastern Afghanistan. He was 15 at the time, they said.

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http://www.nationalpost.com/world/story.html?id=5AE0E31F-3733-4561-A7D0-C78D403E9893

Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, lashed out at critics yesterday for claiming the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was necessary to justify the U.S.-led invasion. Mr. Straw said they were twisting the facts and suggested the coalition's failure to uncover illicit weapons in Iraq was irrelevant.

..."People are now trying to suggest that somehow the decision to take military action was entirely conditional on subsequently finding chemical and biological weapons material,'' Mr. Straw told BBC radio. "That wasn't the case. [The international community] accepted that Saddam had these weapons and they posed a threat," he added.

..."As a legal matter, an inability to find large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction does not mean there is no just cause for the war," said Lee Casey, a Washington-based international law expert and former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration.

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http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/news/5734261.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq -A military team has tentatively concluded that there are no chemical weapons at a site where U.S. troops said they had found chemical agents and mobile labs.

Earlier on Sunday, Lt. Col. Ted Martin of the 10th Cavalry said that one of a dozen 55-gallon drums in an open field had tested positive for cyclosarin, a nerve agent, and a blister agent that could have been mustard gas. He said his soldiers had also found two mobile labs containing equipment for mixing chemicals. The labs had been looted by the time the soldiers arrived. But in an interview Sunday night, Capt. Ryan Cutchin, the leader of Mobile Exploitation Team Bravo, or MET Bravo, said that after surveying the site, near the northern Iraqi town of Ba'iji, his team believed that the earlier reports were wrong. "Our tests showed no positive hits at all," he said. The mobile labs were definitely "not labs," Cutchin said. The vehicles MET Bravo found were "probably for decontamination or some kind of fuel filling, consistent with the rockets found at the site," he said.

This was the latest example of a recurring pattern.

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http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=248027&lang=e&dir=news

Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, chief Iraqi liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors, is in custody, the U.S. Central Command announced Sunday.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45676-2003Apr27?language=printer

MADOO, Afghanistan -- There are more graves than houses in Madoo. The mosque and many of the roughly 35 homes that once made up this hamlet in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan lie in rubble. At least 55 men, women and children -- or pieces of them -- are buried here, their graves marked by flags that are whipped by the wind.

Seventeen months after U.S. warplanes bombed this village and others in the vicinity of Osama bin Laden's cave complex at Tora Bora, Madoo's survivors say they can tell civilian victims of U.S. bombing in Iraq what to expect in the way of help from Washington: nothing.

...Congress directed that an unspecified amount of money be spent to assist innocent victims of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, just as it recently called on the Bush administration to identify and provide "appropriate assistance" to civilian victims in Iraq. But the money has not yet reached any of the intended recipients, U.S. officials acknowledged.

...The U.S. Agency for International Development, for example, had $1.25 million in last year's budget to help Afghan civilians who suffered losses as a result of U.S. military action, according to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. But the agency has not spent any of that money helping Afghans who had their relatives killed, their children maimed, their homes leveled or their livestock and livelihoods destroyed by American bombing, several U.S. officials in Afghanistan conceded this week. The biggest obstacle to delivery of the aid, officials say, has been a prolonged debate over how to assist bombing victims without compensating them.

...There are no official estimates of how many Afghan civilians have been killed by U.S. bombs. A survey published last year by the human rights group Global Exchange estimated the number at more than 800... Bombs are still falling on Afghan civilians as U.S. forces combat a resurgence of terrorism... In eastern Afghanistan this month, a U.S. warplane mistakenly killed 11 members of one family when a 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb missed its intended target and landed on a house.

...The people of Madoo remain puzzled by Americans. A retired Ohio lawyer, who read about one Madoo boy injured in the bombings, was so moved that he visited and gave each survivor about $300. People bought tents and clothes and wheat seeds to plant. But Madoo's losses outstripped one man's largess... [One man aged] 55, who is raising his four surviving children alone, tried to talk about his late wife and daughter but could only turn away and weep. "If we were doing something wrong, I could understand this," he said when he regained his voice.... "The main problem we have now is that we have nothing. We would really appreciate it if someone could help."

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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/5717871.htm

The challenges Afghanistan faces over the next year suggest the problems the United States could confront in Iraq as it tries to demobilize the country and implement a democratic government, especially if its new leaders are viewed as overly dependent on the West. President Hamid Karzai, for instance, is ridiculed by many Afghans as "the mayor of Kabul," because he is perceived to have little clout outside the capital and maintains power only through the presence of international forces.

"Hamid Karzai is all right, but he has no base," said cabdriver Raz Mohammad, 27, blasting his horn in traffic stalled behind vehicles carrying government ministers. "He has so much protection you never see him. All his money is U.S. money. When he leaves the palace, he flies to other countries. I think he is afraid of Afghan people."

...Plans call for demobilizing about 100,000 regional militia soldiers by offering them positions in the Afghan National Army or civilian employment... No one yet knows where the thousands of jobs for former soldiers will come from or what those jobs will pay. A U.N. official speaking on the condition of anonymity said many of the jobs probably would include road-construction work.

..."I think the idea on the part of the United States in the beginning was to disarm Afghanistan, get a constitution and elections in place, and then get out," said a Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Expectations were very high then. Today, expectations are focused on just keeping Afghanistan from blowing up."

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Afghan%20Hekmatyar

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- With the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, one of the most wanted men in Afghanistan, renegade commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, promised President Bush "thousands of Osama bin Ladens." "After the collapse of Baghdad, people think that the war in Iraq has come to an end, but another, guerrilla war, shall begin from this moment on," he warned in five-page Pashtu-language message acquired Thursday by The Associated Press.

..."Now every Arab is an Osama bin Laden and he has found a place of jihad (holy war) in your own neighborhood," Hekmatyar said. "Oh proud Bush, wait for thousands of Osama bin Ladens. You will see the wrath of the Muslim youths in the shape of suicide attacks." ...Hekmatyar, who has been labeled a terrorist by the United States, called Afghan President Hamid Karzai a "U.S. puppet." He said "they want to repeat the same experience in Baghdad," referring to the Iraqi administration that is being cobbled together.

During the rule of the feuding factions in Kabul between 1992 and 1996, Hekmatyar was prime minister. But his bitter rivalry with slain guerrilla Ahmed Shah Massood and deep divisions between other factions fueled fierce battles that destroyed more than half of Kabul, killed 50,000 people and gave rise to the Taliban.

During the Taliban rule, Hekmatyar lived in self-imposed exile in Iran. The Taliban refused to accept him in their ranks despite overtures from Hekmatyar, according to former Taliban. However since their ouster, the Taliban have entered into an alliance with Hekmatyar, who also has links to al-Qaida, according to U.S. and European intelligence sources.

Hekmatyar has a significant following in parts of Afghanistan, particularly in northeastern Kunar province where U.S. Special Forces come under regular attack. In recent weeks there have been stepped up attacks in Afghanistan.

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http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030426-90185781.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that Iran has dispatched "organized elements" to Iraq in a bid to influence the creation of an Islamist system... Mr. Rumsfeld also said that a large number of Iraqis, Syrians and other foreign nationals have been "scooped up" in Iraq.

...Regarding Iran's efforts to influence developments in postwar Iraq, the defense secretary said that Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims "are Iraqis, and the Shi'a outside the country, from Iran, are Persians. And my guess is that the Iraqi people will prefer to be governed by Iraqis and not by Persians," Mr. Rumsfeld said. Iraq and Iran fought a bitter war in the 1980s. Asked to provide details on Iranian activities in Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "You know, they have organized elements that they send into the country to attempt to assert influence."

...Iran's government has denied sending its agents to Iraq. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said on Thursday in Tehran that U.S. charges of Iranian subversion were groundless. "It is very interesting that Americans have occupied Iraq and are now accusing its neighbor of interfering in that country," Mr. Kharrazi said, according to the official IRNA news agency.

...Mr. Rumsfeld said that Iraqis will not be permitted to establish an Islamic state modeled on neighboring Iran. "This much is certain: A vocal minority clamoring to transform Iraq in Iran's image will not be permitted to do so. We will not allow the Iraqi people's democratic transition to be hijacked."

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2643315

The Israeli ambassador in Washington called for "regime change" in Iran and Syria on Monday through diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and what he called "psychological pressure." Ambassador Daniel Ayalon said the U.S. invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein helped create great opportunities for Israel but it was "not enough."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,943955,00.html

The Bush administration is preparing a draft security council resolution that would reduce the United Nations to a marginal role advising the US on running Iraq until the creation of a new government, diplomats and administration officials said yesterday... It represents another defeat for Tony Blair and his attempt to push the US towards a more multilateral approach to solving postwar problems. At their Belfast summit this month Mr Blair persuaded George Bush to agree to a joint statement agreeing that the UN would play a "vital role" in rebuilding Iraq. However, it was immediately clear there was no agreement on what "vital" meant.

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http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=vital

vital adj 1: urgently needed; absolutely necessary; "a critical element of the plan"; "critical medical supplies"; "vital for a healthy society"; "foods indispensable to good nutrition" [syn: critical]

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$0IBOC2EQ2MMTXQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2003/04/28/wkor28.xml/

A "poisonous" row is brewing in Washington over allegations that diplomats knew for weeks that North Korea claimed to be reprocessing nuclear fuel rods but hushed the matter up for fear of derailing peace talks.

The world first knew of North Korean claims to be processing weapons-grade plutonium 10 days ago when the isolated Stalinist regime issued a statement saying it had told America in March about the reprocessing. That statement was initially dismissed as an error. But angry American officials told yesterday's Washington Post that North Korea passed on a message about reprocessing during an earlier meeting with two State Department officials at the United Nations in New York. The State Department kept the Koreans' claim largely under wraps and an administration official predicted: "Heads will roll over this."

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http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030428/1/3ajbu.html

North Korea last week offered the United States a plan to deal with both its nuclear weapons and missile programs, Secretary of State Colin Powell said. However, Powell said the North Koreans wanted "something considerable" in exchange for giving up the programs and indicated it would take some time for the United States to respond.

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http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2629481

DUBAI (Reuters) - After years of shunning the Iraq-based People's Mujahideen as "terrorists," the United States might use Iran's main rebel group to pressure Tehran... "The U.S. is groping to find its bearings on a post-war policy to stabilize Iraq and prevent anything Iran might do in regards to the Shi'ites," said Shireen Hunter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "A group like this might come handy."

...A left-leaning Islamist group during the 1979 revolution against the U.S.-backed shah, the Mujahideen broke from the ruling clergy, accusing them of trying to monopolize power. The group -- also known as Mujahideen Khalq -- waged a bloody campaign in the early 1980s to topple the Islamic Republic with a wave of assassinations of top officials. But many agree the group lost much of its popular support after it collaborated with Baghdad during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Hunter said there may be a debate about any cooperation with the Mujahideen, officially listed as a "terrorist" group but backed by some conservative politicians.

..."Some U.S. congressmen see Mujahideen as the best thing since sliced bread, others think it's a less reputable group. These dynamics are in play right now," Hunter told Reuters... U.S.-led forces bombed bases of the Mujahideen, which had declared its neutrality in the war, but later agreed on a cease-fire with the rebels, allowing them to move into assembly areas.

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http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2003/s839844.htm

Reporter David Loyn has been visiting the city of Kut on the Iraq-Iran border, where one Islamic cleric, Syed Abbas, has been making a bid to establish a fundamentalist administration in the town... DAVID LOYN: "With order restored, I asked the leader who's occupied the Town Hall where his money comes from."

SYED ABBAS, MUSLIM CLERIC, TRANSLATION: "I did not think this was going to be an interrogation. I refuse to answer this. I'm just a simple man. My position is simple, the situation is straightforward. I thought this would be a proper journalist interview that would reflect our point of views. I won't submit to interrogation."

DAVID LOYN: "That's how we do things in Western democracy. Who pays for politics is a legitimate journalist question."

SYED ABBAS, TRANSLATION: "If you want democracy and freedom here, then just tell people that Iraqis want to live in freedom and to elect whom they want. And America should leave us alone. Let's stop here. I'm tired."

...DAVID LOYN: "The Americans have not sat idly by watching Shia clerics take over the town. They increase their security presence dramatically while calling a meeting of tribal leaders. Syed Abbas arrived surrounded by his followers. But he walked through the armed cordon alone, and that was the idea - to show him that he is just one of a number of leaders. Although the locals seemed happy to be on film, the Americans excluded cameras from the meeting, forcefully.

"Afterwards the American general who's in charge of the whole of the highly populated centre of the country between the Tigris and the Euphrates told us that he'd laid down the law, hoping to isolate the cleric in the City Hall." GENERAL RICH NATONSKI, US MARINE CORPS: "The City Hall is a building. The Government of this province and this city is where I meet with this council. That building is meaningless to me."

DAVID LOYN: "...As the Americans grapple with nation-building in Kut, there's nowhere else in Iraq they're so faced with the memories of the past. Kut was the scene of one of the major reverses of the First World War, when a British expeditionary force was besieged here for almost five months by the Turks in 1915. But even where the 1915 graves are packed close together, the gravestones are missing."

COLONEL JIM SMOOTS, US MARINE CORPS: "It really gives you a sense of history that we're just sort of doing this again. Hopefully this time it will be for the last time and we won't have to erect any more gravestones in Iraq."

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http://www.balochistanpost.com/item.asp?ID=3870

A new law being proposed by Republican senators will serve prohibit criticism of Israel on American college campuses... [The] legislation is to be introduced by third-ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate, conservative Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. His so-called "ideological diversity" legislation suggests cutting federal funding for American colleges and universities if those institutions are found to be permitting professors, students and student organizations to openly criticize Israel, which Santorum considers to be an act of "anti-Semitism."

Under the bill to be introduced by Santorum, the federal funding formula under Title IX of the Higher Education Act will include "ideological diversity" as well as sexual equality in education as a perquisite for federal funding, reveals Michael Collins Piper of the American Free Press on April 21.

Sen. Santorum has the support of another fellow conservative and GOP stalwart - who is a leading pro-Israel ideologue -- Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. Brownback, who is reportedly living in church-sponsored luxury accommodation in Washington, has his own scheme to call for a federal commission to be established under Title IX to investigate allegedly anti-Semitic incidents on American campuses.

The news of the Santorum-Brownback scheme, appeared in the April 15 issue of the New York Sun, a vehemently pro-Israel neo-conservative daily published in Manhattan, through Wayne Firestone, director of the Center for Israel Affairs for the Hillel Foundation. Hillel has units on campuses across America. According to the report, Santorum, along with several Republicans members of the Senate, had invited representatives of a number of powerful Jewish organizations to attend a private meeting on Capitol Hill in order to discuss the senators' concerns about growing criticism of Israel on American college campuses. The meeting was attended by senators Santorum, Robert Bennett (Utah), Sam Brownback (Kansas) and Norm Coleman (Minnesota). Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tennessee), as senators Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) and George Voinovich (Ohio) sent staff representatives... Louis Goldstein, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, represented the U.S. President George Bush administration.

...Sen. Santorum is emerging as one of Israel's leading Senate spokesmen. He is one of the chief cosponsors of the ‘Syrian Accountability Act’ that accuses Syria of supporting ‘terrorism’ and developing weapons of mass destruction and demands that Syria withdraw from Lebanon.

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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20030428175516961

THE HAGUE - Again the United States is refueling its recently-softened tone against Syria, with [U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control, Stephen Rademaker]... expressing Washington’s worries that Damascus has ‘active chemical weapons programs’... Rademaker [also]... singled out Iran... "We believe Iran continues to seek chemicals, production technology, training and expertise from abroad," Rademaker claimed.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/26/international/middleeast/26MIDE.html?ex=1052374813&ei=1&en=f2fcb1711ea3f3f1

The Bush administration, seeking to bolster a newly emerging team of Palestinian leaders, is pressing Arab and European nations to cut back diplomatic contacts with Yasir Arafat and divert the financing of Palestinian activities away from his control, officials here said today. The campaign for a global drive to undercut Mr. Arafat is one of several items on Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's agenda for his trip to the Middle East next month, the first Bush administration attempt in a year to become directly involved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr. Powell's objective is also to persuade Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to get the newly designated Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, to push Mr. Arafat aside... American officials say they do not want to be seen arriving the minute Mr. Abbas takes office, making it seem as if he was an American puppet.

...A test of this policy may come Sunday, with the visit of the Japanese foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, to Israel. Administration officials said today that Ms. Kawaguchi and others are being told that if they meet with Mr. Arafat, they may not be able to meet with Mr. Sharon. In addition, an administration official said today that the United States had told officials from the European Union, the United Nations and Russia that a peace plan they helped draft toward a Palestinian state, known as the road map, would not be formally presented to Mr. Arafat. Instead, the officials said the plan should be presented only to Mr. Abbas.

...Trips to the Middle East by American secretaries of state have been frequent, but Mr. Powell has not made one for a year... Administration hard-liners were angry over Mr. Powell's decision during his last trip to meet with Mr. Arafat... After Mr. Powell came home, insisting that he had met with Mr. Arafat only to demand that he crack down on violence, the Bush administration effectively froze its peacemaking efforts until someone other than Mr. Arafat could emerge.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=401070

The new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, insisted yesterday that he would refuse to take diplomatic trips abroad – including to the White House – until Israel lifted its travel ban on Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian President has been blockaded amid the rubble of his Ramallah headquarters for more than a year. Mr Abbas, known by his nickname, Abu Mazen, said: "I will not leave the country and I will not visit anywhere before the siege imposed on President Arafat has been lifted and before he enjoys full freedom to move within the West Bank and Gaza and outside, without any obstacles to his return."

Ra'anan Gissin, a spokesman for Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, denied that Mr Arafat was under siege. "Arafat is free to go," he said. "The question is whether he's free to come back."

...Mr Sharon slightly softened his boycott of Mr Arafat, saying he would not automatically refuse to meet any foreign minister who visited the Palestinian President. The Prime Minister's welcome mat would be rolled out on a "case-by-case" basis, but all visiting statesmen would be received by Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister. Mr Sharon declined to meet Yoriko Kawaguchi, the Japanese Foreign Minister, who is seeing Mr Arafat, but she will have talks this week with Mr Shalom.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/27/1051381850795.html

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided not to prevent foreign dignitaries from visiting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli radio said yesterday... Sharon and Shalom did however say that foreign officials "have no reason to meet Arafat, in as much as Israel does not consider him an interlocutor".

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http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=8&id=257945

Illegal immigrants can be jailed indefinitely without bond when national security risks exist, Attorney General John Ashcroft has declared in a legal opinion... The order means such aliens will not be released on bond while their cases are being decided by immigration judges... During an appearance Thursday in New Orleans, Ashcroft defended his decision and said aliens held without bond have the right to defend themselves in court. He said he would continue to seek new, legal ways to detain people suspected of terrorism.

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http://www.kfor.com/Global/story.asp?s=1250476

Earlier this year news that the army would conduct bio-terrorism tests in central Oklahoma sent a near panic through some communities.

in the 1950s and America was in the height of the Cold War... Little did Americans know they were already under attack -- by America. "The human populations didn't know, the local governments didn't know, this was a secret army project that went on for 20 years," said author Leonard Cole. The U.S. government was preparing for germ warfare by secretly spraying biological agents on its own citizens. The tests were conducted in 239 cities, including one of Oklahoma's most prominent communities. "Among the hundreds and hundreds of tests that the army did, Stillwater, Oklahoma was targeted," said Cole, an expert on the Army's development of biological weapons. In some cities reports indicate Americans actually died because of the testing.

Government records show florescent particles of zinc cadmium sulfide were released in Stillwater in 1962. "Cadmium itself is known to be one of the most highly toxic materials in small amounts that a human can be exposed to," Cole said... There was no medical monitoring of the population exposed to the particles and Payne County health officials have no records to show the affect, if any, on the people in the Stillwater area.

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http://timesargus.nybor.com/Story/64387.html

MONTPELIER — The percentage of seeds sold in Vermont that are genetically altered is much higher than state officials had previously anticipated, according to figures released Thursday by the Vermont Department of Agriculture. Almost half of all seeds sold to Vermont dealers — 44 percent — are genetically modified by the manufacturers, Agriculture Commissioner Stephen Kerr told the House Agriculture Committee Thursday... Officials had previously believed genetically modified seeds comprised roughly 10 percent or so of all seeds sold in Vermont.

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http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Apr/04272003/public_f/51463.asp

The U.S.A. Patriot Act gives the government broad powers, including the ability to access medical, financial, library and other private records... [and] only a small percentage of the vast new powers given federal law enforcement actually are scheduled to expire at the end of 2005. Many powers were not covered by the sunsets, including the controversial "sneak and peek" searches that allow the government to search our homes, download our computer files and Internet histories -- all without informing us. What's more, these searches are not restricted to people who are suspected of being terrorists or even having ties to terrorists.

Other measures that will not expire include lowering standards for authorizing certain wiretapping devices and granting the CIA domestic law enforcement powers, which previously were prohibited.

--Dani Eyer, Executive director, ACLU of Utah

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http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7659

If big business hopes to regain the dwindling trust of Americans, claiming the right to lie is hardly the way to do it. Yet Nike Corporation lawyers have advanced just that claim to U.S. Supreme Court justices in the recently heard case of Nike v. Kasky. They hope the court will overturn a California Supreme Court decision that denied Nike’s privilege to "plead the First" (Amendment) when charged with violating state anti-fraud laws.

...In the face of increasingly unfavorable publicity in 1996 and 1997, Nike conducted a public relations blitz to convince people it had cleaned up its subcontractors' notorious "sweatshops." But Californian Marc Kasky didn’t buy it. He claims Nike was being deceptive about its practices and sued the corporation under California consumer protection laws.

...Rather than attempting to refute Kasky’s charges, Nike instead challenged the legitimacy of the truth-in-advertising law itself. The corporation’s attorneys argued that because the PR campaign was about more than the company’s practices and did not promote specific products, that the PR campaign should be considered fully-protected political speech, not less-protected commercial speech... Nike’s going out of its way to try to legally cement its ability to speak deceptively.

...Some counterbalances to the excesses of corporations are necessary. Without such controls, corporations can threaten the functioning of democracies, like the way they already dominate many ballot initiatives. If the Supreme Court rules that corporations can enjoy fully protected political rights, it would rapidly erode the already weakened powers of democratic governments and their citizenries... Corporations need not be held to perfect accuracy, but they must be held accountable to the high standards of truth we as citizens should expect from corporations -- especially because, again, corporations are nothing more than legal entities created by (and regulated by) our governments.

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http://truthout.org/docs_03/042903F.shtml

PITTSBURGH - Worn down by job searches that have stretched on for months, demoralized by disappointing offers or outright rejections, some unemployed people have simply stopped the search. As the nation enters a third year of difficult economic times, these unemployed - from factory workers to investment bankers - have dropped out of the labor force and entered the invisible ranks of people not counted in the unemployment rate. Some are going back to school or getting new job training. Others have chosen to stay home with young children or aging parents and to rely on their spouse's salary, at least for now. Still others are plainly waiting.

...Over the last two years, the portion of Americans in the labor force - those who are either working or actively looking for work - has fallen 0.9 percentage points to 66.2 percent, the largest drop in almost 40 years. More than 74,500,000 adults were considered outside of the labor force last month, up more than 4,000,000 since March 2001, the Department of Labor says. They are people who fall outside the government's definitions of either employed or unemployed: they do not hold jobs, but they also have not gone out seeking work within the past month.

..."This is what we see today - job searches that can take 6 to 12 months," said Charlie Beck, who has directed the support group, Priority Two, for the past 20 years. "By six months, people really start to doubt themselves." ...Most people dropping out of the labor force are men, the Labor Department says, and the number of black men not looking for work has risen particularly sharply. Teenagers who were drawn into the labor force in large numbers in the late 1990's have also left it recently at a rapid pace. But frustration with the economy has cut across almost every demographic group. For the first time since the 1960's, the proportion of women in the labor force has declined over an extended period. In March, 60.6 percent of women 20 and older were in the labor force, down from 61 percent in March 2001.

...Other people are still dangling, ever so precariously, on the edge of the labor market. They are still filing job applications, but they acknowledge that their searches have slowed over the months, and even years. Many have begun to talk about giving up on the traditional job path. The question is where they will go. Some talk of starting up businesses. Others say they may have to settle for anything soon.

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http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=13623&t=1

GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical giant, has slashed the price of its Aids drugs to sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world's poorest countries, it announced today. The cut almost halves the annual cost of treatment with its drug Combivir... [to] within sight of the low price offered in the past couple of years by the generic "copycat" companies in countries unconstrained by international patent laws.

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http://www.irna.com/en/head/030428224020.ehe.shtml

Islamabad, April 28, IRNA - Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has invited his Indian counterpart Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee to visit Pakistan at his convenience in the interest of peace and stability in South Asia. The offer was made by Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali in a telephonic conversation with Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee on Monday, an official statement said. "The conversation was most cordial and useful," according to the statement.

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interview with bob fisk by amy goodman

http://truthout.org/docs_03/042703E.shtml

Goodman: After spending a month in Iraq, could you describe your thoughts?

Fisk: Well, my assumption is that history has a way or repeating itself. I was talking to a very military Shiite Muslim from Nashas about only five days ago... [who] said "Yes, history is repeating itself," and I knew what he meant. He was referring to the British invasion or Iraq in 1917 and Lt. Gen. Sir Stanley Maude, when we turned up in Baghdad and Sir Stanley Maude issued a document saying "we have come here not as conquerors but as liberators to free you from generations of tyranny." And within three years, we were losing hundreds of men every year in the guerilla war against the Iraqis, who wanted real liberation, not by us from the Ottomans, but by them from us, and I think that's what's going to happen with the Americans in Iraq. I think a war of liberation will begin quite soon, which of course will be first referred to as a war by terrorists, by al Qaeda, by remnants of Saddam's regime, remnants (remember that word)-- but it will be waged particularly by Shiite Muslims against the Americans and the British to get us out of Iraq.

...So what I've been writing about these past few days is simply the following. We claim that we want to preserve the national heritage of the Iraqi people, and yet my own count of government buildings burning in Baghdad before I left was 158, of which the only buildings protected by the United States army and the marines were the Ministry of Interior, which has the intelligence corp of Iraq and the Ministry of Oil, and I needn't say anything else about that. Every other ministry was burning. Even the Ministry of Higher Education/Computer Science was burning. And in some cases American marines were sitting on the wall next to the ministries watching them burn... Somebody has an interest in destroying the center of a new government and the cultural identity of Iraq.

Now, the American line is "these are Saddamite remnants, remnants of a Saddam regime." I don't believe this. If I was a remnant of a Saddam regime and, say I was given $20,000 to destroy the library, I would say 'thank you very much,' and when the regime was gone I would pocket the money. I wouldn't go and destroy the library; I don't need to, I've got the money. Somebody or some institution or some organization today now is actively setting out to destroy the cultural identity of Iraq and the ministries that form the core of a new Iraq government.

Who would be behind that and who would permit it to happen, and why is it that the US military, so famed for its ability to fight its way across the Tigris and the Euphrates river and come into Baghdad, will not act under the Geneva Convention to protect these institutions? That is the question. And I do not have the answer to it.

Goodman: There was a report today that said that the US army ignored warnings from its own civilian advisors that could have prevented the looting of Baghdad's National Museum-- this is from the London Observer.

Fisk: ...Yeah, well the Observer is always quite a bit late on the story. There was a website set up between American archaeologists and the Pentagon many weeks ago, listing those areas of vital national heritage to Iraq which might be looted, damaged, stormed, burned. The museum was on that list. The museum, I have seen physically marked on the satellite pictures which the marines have, to move around in Baghdad. They know it's there, they know what it is. Now, when I got to the museum, which is far more than a week ago, there were gun battles going on between rioters and looters... The looting was on a most detailed, precise and coordinated scale. The people knew what the wanted to go for. Those Grecian statues they didn't want they decapitated and threw to the floor. Those earrings and gold ornaments and bullring gods that they wanted to take, they took. And within a few days those priceless heritage items of Iraq's history were on sale in Europe and in America. I don't believe that that happened by chance.

Two of the interesting things: number one is the looters knew exactly what they wanted and they got it out of a country with a speed that we as journalists cannot get our stories out of the country. Secondly... the arsonists, the men who were going around burning, they must have had maps, they knew where to go, they knew what would not be defended by the Americans.

In one case-- you know this is a city without electricity, without water-- I recognized one of the men who was burning things. He had a small beard, a goatee beard and he had a red t-shirt, and the second time I saw him, I looked at him and he pointed a [inaudible] rifle at me; he realized I recognized him. They were coming to the scenes of arsonists in blue and white buses. God knows where these buses were from. They weren't city corporation buses... The arsonists were an army... Who told them where to go? Who told them where the Americans would not shoot at them or would not harm them? This is a very, very important question... And none of my colleagues, unfortunately, have asked the American military in Qatar, in Doha, what the answer is.

...My country's army in Basra was also remiss in this way. Our Minister of Defense, Geoff Hoon, said "Oh well, they were liberating their own property," when people were looting hospitals, for god's sakes. So the British don't get off on this either, but the Americans were the most remiss.

Goodman: ...Robert, the hospitals, you spent a good amount of time there. Can you describe what you saw.

Fisk: ...Well as a matter of fact this afternoon, I took several roles of film, real film, not digitized camera film, into my film development shop here, and was looking again at the film of children who'd been hit by American cluster bombs in Hilla and Babylon, whom I took photographs of. I'm rather shocked at myself for taking pictures of people in such suffering. I would have to say, and one must be fair as a correspondent, that I think that the Iraqis did position military tanks and missiles in civilian areas. They did so deliberately; they did so in order to try and preserve their military apparatus in the hope that the Americans would not bomb civilian areas. The Americans did bomb civilian areas. They may or may not have destroyed the military targets; they certainly destroyed human beings and innocent civilians.

War is a disgusting, cruel, vicious affair. You know, I say to people over and over again: war is not about primarily victory or defeat, it's primarily about human suffering and death. And if you look through the pictures, which I have beside me now as I speak to you, of little girls with huge wounds in the side of their faces made by the pieces of metal from cluster bombs, American cluster bombs, it's degoutant, as the French say, disgusting to even look at. But I have to look at them. I took these pictures.

...Again, one needs to also say that Saddam Hussein was...is - I'm sure he's still alive - a most revolting man. He did use gas against the Iranians and against the Kurds. And I also have to say that when he used it against the Iranians, and I wrote about it in my own newspaper at the time, the Times, the British Foreign Office told my editor the story was not helpful because at that stage of course, Saddam Hussein was our friend - we were supporting him. The hypocrisy of war stinks almost as much as the civilian casualties.

But let's go back to the hospitals. The Americans used cluster bombs in civilian areas, where they believed there were military targets. Near Hilla, I think the Iraqis probably did put military vehicles. That does not excuse the Americans; there are specific references and paragraphs in the Geneva Conventions to protect what are called 'protected persons', that is to say civilians, even if they are in the presence of enemy combatants... The Iraqis did use civilians as cover. And the Americans, knowing they were there, bombed the civilians anyway. So who is the war criminal? I think both of them are. There you go. That's the story.

Goodman: Robert Fisk, do you have any idea about casualty numbers right now?

Fisk: No, it's impossible. Amy, it's impossible. You know, I took my notebook; I can tell you how many people in each ward were wounded in particular wards, or in particular hospitals... but when it comes to the overall figure, the losing side has no statistics, because of course the statistics die with the regime and the winning side controls all the figures. Thousands of Iraqis must have died.