Nation & world briefing
Al-Qaida may be planning new attack
Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
WASHINGTON—A new threat of
coming attacks, apparently from
Osama bin Laden’s top aide, and re
cent killings of American soldiers in
Kuwait and the Philippines have U.S.
officials worried that a revitalized al
Qaida may be launching a new ter
rorism campaign.
One Marine was killed and a sec
ond injured Tuesday when two as
sailants in a pickup truck opened fire
during a military exercise on an is
land off Kuwait City. Marines shot
the pair dead. They were later iden
tified as Kuwaitis. State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher on
ter
rorist attack.
In what could be a related inci
dent, a U.S. soldier fired Wednesday
at the driver of a civilian vehicle af
ter one of its two occupants pointed
a weapon at the soldier’s Humvee,
said Marine Corps Maj. Rob Riggle, a
spokesman for the U.S. Central
Command. The incident took place
on Highway 80 north of Camp Doha,
where American forces in Kuwait
are based. U.S. and Kuwaiti officials
are investigating, Riggle said.
On Oct. 2, an American Green
Beret assigned to train Filipino
troops in counterterrorism tech
niques was among three people who
extremist band
Also feeding those fears was Sun
day’s suspected bombing of a
French-owned oil tanker off Yemen
and a sharp rise in intelligence re
ports indicating that al-Qaida could
be aiming to hit “accessible econom
ic targets” in America or elsewhere,
said a U.S. intelligence official, who
requested anonymity.
Such targets could include oil
tankers and loading facilities in the
Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the
Middle East, and symbolic targets
such as the New York Stock Ex
change, the Federal Reserve in
Washington or the Chicago Board of
Trade, the official said. There is no
intelligence to indicate that any of
those has been targeted, however,
the official said. j
New strikes by bin Laden’s follow
ers could deal fresh blows to the sput
tering U.S. economy, especially if
they disrupt vital petroleum supplies.
American officials said Wednes
day that voice recordings received
by The Associated Press in London
and the al Jazeera television station
in Qatar this week almost certainly
were made within the last few
months by Ayman al Zawahiri, an
Egyptian who has been bin Laden’s
closest aide and spiritual adviser.
“It’s probably (Zawahiri),” said an
American official with knowledge of
preliminary U.S. government analy
ses of the recordings.
If genuine, the recordings would
prove that Zawahiri, 51, has eluded
U.S.-led military operations in
Afghanistan, and could mean that
bin Laden did too, because the two
were virtually inseparable. No firm
evidence of bin Laden’s survival
has surfaced since the United
States heavily bombed his Afghan
mountain stronghold of Tora Bora
last December, though some re
ports suggest he remains in hiding
in the region.
The recordings “most likely mean
that both jokers are still alive,” said
the U.S. intelligence official. But a
second U.S. intelligence official said
the recordings could indicate that
Zawahiri had taken command of al
Qaida because bin Laden was dead
or incapacitated.
© 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services. Knight Ridder
correspondent Warren P. Strobel
contributed to this report
David Goldstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
i
WASHINGTON — The U.S. mil
itary'admitted Wednesday that its
secret germ and chemical warfare
testing program involved experi
ments on American soil, as well as
Canada and Britain — far wider
than originally believed.
Declassified reports disclosed
by the Department of Defense
show the army tested several
lethal nerve gases, including Sarin,
VX and Tabun, as well as a variety
of possibly dangerous chemical
agents in a series of tests between
1962 and 1973 in Alaska, Hawaii
and Utah.
In one Alaska test called Elk
rubber
gas VX — which
balled “one of the
stances ever synthe
was loaded into land
mines and detonated underground
and underwater. Army personnel
in protective clothing “traversed
the contaminated test grids” so the
amount of VX picked up on their
clothing cot
“We won
gear and
said Jerre!
Mo., who was an Army private and
an Elk Hunt volunteer in4964.
The military also experimented
with other %nore Nnign sub
stances, including a wheat fungus
in Florida in 1968 to determine its
value as a biological warfare agent
against ag
William Winkenwerdor Jr., a
top Defense Department health
official, told a House Veterans
Affairs hearing Wednesday that
the servicemen involved in tests
using five biological agents were
clothing
pi
in other, eai. ...... _^ _
tests have said that in their cases
— regardless of the military’s
assurances —* they were neither
given protective clothing nor told
the nature offlie tests.
Many of them now believe that
they suffer similar ailments,
including assorted types of cancer
and respiratory problems, because
the 1970s*
got into a mess and didn’t
realize what we got into,” he said.
He recalled In an interview that
when they asked about the nature
of the tests, they were told that
the aritty was experimenting with
nerve agents to | find the “right
mixture to make people feel badly
sick without really killing them
real quick.” "‘VW
Jonathan B. Perlin, deputy
undersecretary for health for the
Department of Veterans Affairs,
testified that the agency was try
ing to reach all 5,000 SHAD veter
arts and the additional 500
involved in the latest land-based
tests. He also said a $3 million,
three-year study of the medical
effects of Project SHAD was under
way.
Rep. Christopher Smith, a New
Jersey Republican and chairman
of the Veterans Affairs Committee,
said the VA needed to aggressively
reach out to those veterans.
“There needs to be a sense of
accountability,” Smith said.
“Some of these men and women
are sick and don’t know what to
attribute it to.”
© 2002, The Kansas City Star.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
Politics will shape U.N.’s final resolution on Iraq
fciizabetn Neutter
The Boston Globe
UNITED NATIONS (U-WIRE) —
As United Nations diplomats wran
gle over the terms of a new, tough
Security Council resolution
aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein
to disarm, it will be the behind
the-scenes horse-trading — as
much as the mandate’s fine print
— that will make or break any
final UN deal.
Publicly, diplomats remain
divided: whether to have one reso
lution or two, whether to threaten
Iraq with military force directly or
with unspecified consequences
later. Privately, however, what’s
also at stake is what concessions
Washington is willing to grant to
get its allies on board.
China wants assurance that the
United States will overlook its
actions in Tibet and downplay the
importance of Taiwan. Russia has
its eye on billions of dollars in as
yet-unrealized oil deals in Iraq,
which has the world’s second
largest known oil reserves. And
France, which also has vested
interests in Iraq’s lucrative oil
fields, doesn’t want to give the
United States a blank check for
military force against Iraq.
“Countries are trying to make it
clear — on an initiative on which
they have grave misgivings — that
Washington has to realize they will
accumulate brownie points and be
prepared to accommodate them
later,” said David Malone, a former
Canadian ambassador . to the
United Nations and president of
the International Peace Academy,
a New York-based think-tank.
• Nowhere in the 15-member
Security ■ Council is the trading
more fast and turious than among
its five permanent members.
Each wields a veto that can block
any plan.
But if the United States and
Britain, spearheading the drive for
the new resolution, can capture
the votes of the other three perma
nent members — France, China
and Russia — the new United
Nations measure is all but guaran
teed. Only nine votes are needed
for passage, and the other rotating
member countries often follow the
lead of the permanent five.
Some consensus has emerged:
Diplomats appear to agree a new
resolution is needed before U.N.
weapons inspectors return to Iraq
to hunt for Iraq’s supposed
weapons of mass destruction. But
sharp differences over the wording
of the mandate remain.
The United States and Britain
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favor a measure granting U.N.
inspectors wide-ranging powers to
seek weapons of mass destruction
and threatening “all necessary
means” should Iraq fail to comply.
France, by contrast, favors two
resolutions: one, laying out
stricter terms governing U.N.
weapons inspection, and a second
that would “consider any meas
ure” should Iraq fail to comply.
The French draft also refers to
Iraq’s “sovereign and territorial
integrity” — a phrase that is
anathema to the Americans
because it was used by the Iraqis
in the past to block access by
weapons inspectors to presidential
palaces. But it is a phrase that res
onates with the Chinese, who are
troubled bby the precedent that
sanctioning military action against
Iraq might create in the absence of
a state of war.
Peace Corps
Get ready to redefine your world!
University of Oregon
October 15-16, 2002
Information Table
EMU Lobby
10:00 am to 3:00 pm - both days
Slide Show and Information Meeting
International Resource Center - EMU
7:00 to 8:30 pm - October 16 only
Peace Corps recruiter Jay Minert will be on campus to
answer your questions. Stop by his information table
and discuss the interesting possibilities Peace Corps has
to offer. Be sure to catch his slide show in the evening
too. There will be plenty of time for questions.
www.peacecorps.gov
(800) 424-8580 - Option 1