Hussein Faces Tribunal Today In First Trial for Actions in Iraq

By Jackie Spinner

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq, Oct. 18 -- Almost two years after U.S. forces captured a disheveled Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the ground on a farm near his home town of Tikrit, the former Iraqi president will appear Wednesday before a five-member panel of his countrymen in the first criminal case brought against him and seven Baath Party associates.

Iraqis blame Hussein for the deaths and torture of hundreds of thousands of citizens during nearly three decades in power. But he will face charges concerning a single incident, the execution of 143 men and boys from the predominantly Shiite Muslim town of Dujail, 35 miles north of the capital.

Prosecutors allege that Hussein ordered the killings as retaliation after gunmen fired on his motorcade in the town on July 8, 1982, in an attempt to assassinate him.

In addition to the executions, which occurred three years later at Abu Ghraib prison, more than 1,500 townspeople were arrested, prosecutors allege. Many were banished to desert prisons where families were crowded together in windowless cells for years. Bulldozers plowed over the fertile groves of orange and date palm trees that provided the primary livelihood for Dujail's residents.

Unlike Balkan leaders who have faced war crimes charges in a U.N. court in The Hague, Hussein will appear before the Iraqi Special Tribunal, a body established in December 2003 by U.S.-led occupation authorities. It will use a mixture of international law and Iraqi criminal law in conducting the trial.

The transitional Iraqi parliament, elected in January, has put its stamp on the court process. It approved minor revisions to the law that created the tribunal, but those changes will not go into effect until they are published in an official paper of record.

In a rare telephone interview on Tuesday, Hussein's sole attorney, Khalil Dulaimi, said his client would not get a "fair or honest trial at all." He questioned the legitimacy of the court.

Dulaimi said he was informed of the trial's start date only on Sept. 25. "I need at least three more months to be prepared for the trial," he said. Speeding up the trial was intended "to confuse the defense and deprive it from full preparations," he added.

"Psychologically, I am prepared and will go with full confidence," he said. But "it will be a show trial only."

In a report issued two days ago, Human Rights Watch raised concerns that the tribunal was not being impartial and independent. The report noted that the U.S. government had spent $128 million on investigations and prosecutions of members of Hussein's government.

The first trials before the tribunal will be "a litmus test for whether it is up to the task of delivering justice," the report stated. "Fair trials are not only the entitlement of defendants. They are also a prerequisite for acknowledging the experiences of hundreds of thousands of victims of the former regime in an open, transparent and publicly accessible way," it said.

Jaafar Mousawi, the tribunal's chief prosecutor in Hussein's trial, said the lawyers and judges intend to reply on Wednesday to accusations that the tribunal does not have proper jurisdiction because it was formed by the U.S. occupation authority.

"They have the right to say what they want," Mousawi said of the critics, "and we have the right and the power to reply. We are confident of what we have in this case, the evidences with the defendants' statements and documents with their signatures."

Asked what was going through his mind on the eve of the trial's start, Mousawi said he was "excited to achieve justice."

The other defendants in the case are Barzan Ibrahim, Hussein's half brother and the head of Iraq's intelligence service until 2003; Taha Yassin Ramadan, Iraq's vice president until 2003; Awad Haman Bander Sadun, former chief of Hussein's Revolutionary Court, which sentenced many of the Dujail men to death; Abdullah Kadhim Ruweid, a senior Baath Party official in Dujail who is accused of rounding up the local residents after the assassination attempt; Mizher Abdullah Ruweid, his son; and two other senior Baath Party officials in Dujail, Ali Daeem Ali and Mohammed Azawi Ali.

If convicted, all could face death by hanging. Under one of the revisions approved by the Iraqi parliament but not yet formally implemented, any sentence would be carried out within 30 days of a final appeal decision. That means Hussein might never be tried for other crimes of which he has been accused, including the campaign against the Kurds that killed at least 180,000, the deadly suppression of Shiite uprisings in southern Iraq following the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the invasion of Kuwait.

Sources close to the tribunal have said that the proceedings that begin Wednesday will probably last only a day or two while the tribunal addresses motions and technicalities. Hussein's defense is likely to request a recess to provide more time to prepare, the sources said, and the tribunal will probably grant it. The sources expect the recess to last several weeks, perhaps until the first of the year.

When the trial resumes, the prosecution would begin outlining its case, calling witnesses and presenting evidence. That phase could last several months, the same sources said. But few expect it to drag out for years.

The trial will be held in the fortified Green Zone in a courtroom built specifically for these proceedings within Hussein's former Republican Palace compound. The marble-lined, chandelier-hung courtroom has a screen to protect the anonymity of some witnesses, according to the Reuters news service. Hussein and his seven co-defendants will face the five judges, though it is not clear if the judges' identities will be revealed. The tribunal will allow televised coverage.

U.S. and Iraqi security forces are on high alert for the trial, which some people anticipate will encourage renewed violence following Saturday's relatively quiet constitutional referendum.

Asked if he thought the Hussein trial would spur insurgent attacks, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari said: "Iraqis in general are not sympathetic to him. I don't think they will shed any tears."

Luai Baldawi, editor in chief of al-Mutamar newspaper in Baghdad, said most Iraqis were eager for the trial to begin. "Hussein represented all Iraq; that is why Iraqis put all the responsibilities to what happened to Iraq on Hussein," Baldawi said. Nonetheless, Iraqis seem split over the fairness of the process, he said.

In the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad on Tuesday, residents reflected that sentiment. "There should be an Iraqi court to try Hussein," said Muhanned Abbas, 30, who was buying gasoline from a black-market vendor. "The special tribunal is formed by the Americans and will not try Hussein as the Iraqis want but as America wants."

Mohammed Othman, 45, a pharmacist, said that no matter what the outcome, the trial would not change anything. "Hussein is gone," he said. "There would be no difference if he is tried or not. We should focus on how to build our country and how to be united. We should forget about the past and focus on the future."

Correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer and special correspondents Omar Fekeiki, Bassam Sebti and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and Salih Saif Aldin in Dujail contributed to this report.




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KASHMIR QUAKE

- Quake-Hit Pakistan Races Against Winter
http://www.terradaily.com/news/disaster-ma...ent-05zzzp.html

Ghari Dupatta, Pakistan (AFP) Oct 18, 2005 - The UN warned Tuesday time was running out for Pakistan's quake survivors, with half a million yet to receive help and not enough tents in the world to keep them warm this winter.

- Pakistan, India Move To Open Quake-Hit Kashmir
http://www.terradaily.com/news/disaster-ma...ent-05zzzq.html

- Pakistan Forced Aid Agencies To Pull Pictures Of Quake Zone: Journal
http://www.terradaily.com/news/disaster-ma...ent-05zzzr.html

- UN Says Not Enough Tents In The World For Quake Survivors
http://www.terradaily.com/news/disaster-ma...ent-05zzzs.html

- Pakistan Cuts Through Mountain Roads To Reach Quake Survivors
http://www.terradaily.com/news/pakistan-05n.html

India To Forge Plan With US To Separate Civilian, Military Nuclear Programs
http://www.spacewar.com/news/nuclear-civil-05zzzd.html

New York (AFP) Oct 18, 2005 - The United States and India will draw up a plan separating India's civilian and military nuclear facilities to pave the way for implementation of their landmark atomic energy cooperation deal by early 2006, a senior US official said Tuesday.

Elbaradei 'Confident' Nuclear Talks Will Resume With Iran
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iran-05zzzzp.html

Vienna (AFP) Oct 18, 2005 - The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, said Tuesday he was "confident" that negotiations would resume soon with Iran over the nature of its nuclear program.

New Chinese Missile Subs Pose Challenge To U.S.
http://www.spacewar.com/news/submarine-05r.html

UN says avian flu may hit Africa next
The next stops on bird migratory pathways are not in western Europe, but in the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa, UN officials said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/news/flu.php

Not guilty, a defiant Saddam asserts at trial
The unspoken message seemed to be that pride would not stop the 68-year-old Saddam from fighting a case that could carry him to the gallows.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/news/saddam.php

Against resistance, Belarus revives its poisoned lands
President Lukashenko is pushing to bring regions contaminated by Chernobyl back into use.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/news/belarus.php

South Korea to supply stem cells for research
The organization will probably accelerate the creation and use of cloned human embryonic stem cells, which many scientists see as a potent tool for understanding diseases.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/news/clone.php

Rumsfeld warns against a new 'wall'
In a speech to mid-career Communist Party officials preparing for senior leadership positions, the U.S. defense secretary also criticized Beijing's military expansion.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/news/rumsfeld.php

3 U.S. soldiers face arrest in Spain
A judge issued an international arrest order in connection with the death of a Spanish journalist who was killed when an American tank fired at his hotel in Baghdad.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/news/spain.php

Agreement reached to open Kashmir border
For the first time in 16 years, people across the frontier were able to speak to relatives by phone in what was seen as the first sign that Pakistan and India were trying to bridge political differences.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/news/quake.php

Senators query Rice about Iraq
The secretary of state declined to predict when American forces could withdraw or to rule out widening the war to Syria.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/news/iraq.php

Microsoft bolsters effort by European software makers
On Thursday in Brussels, a group of 20 to 30 companies is set to announce the formation of the European Software Association.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/business/soft.php

Can New Orleans survive its rebirth?
New Orleans was well on its way to becoming a picture postcard vision of the past before the hurricane struck.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/features/arch.php

A disastrous constitution
The Iraqi constitution, which early returns indicate is likely to be approved by voters, is nothing more or less than a time bomb.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/opinion/edmukhlis.php

Let's put on some institutional muscle
There is a need for a new disaster relief world fund from which humanitarian coordinators can immediately draw when a crisis threatens.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/opinion/edbrown.php

Meanwhile: When Britannia ruled the waves
Britain has turned the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar into a year-long orgy of nostalgia.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/19/opinion/edbeam.php

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article320885.ece

UN chief warns of new 'massive wave of death' in Pakistan
AP
Published: 20 October 2005
The United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan warned that a second " massive wave of death" would hit Pakistani areas most affected by the mammoth earthquake unless the international community stepped up the relief effort immediately.

With winter approaching fast and terrain difficult in the affected area of some 11,000 square miles, the relief effort was one of the most challenging undertaken, he said.

"It is a race against time to save the lives of these people," Annan said. "This is a huge, huge disaster ... perhaps the biggest ever that we have seen ... and at the time of the cold season."

"I would hope that the international community will respond and those with capacity will do everything possible to work with us and work with the Pakistani government."

All essential infrastructure has been destroyed in the area, including roads, water systems, hospitals, schools and government buildings, Annan said explaining that some remote areas have still not been reached because of the difficult terrain.

He called for a major increase in funds, noting that donors had only made firm commitments for 12%, or £20 million of the UN appeal for £173 million. By comparison, he said, the UN flash appeal after last December's tsunami was more than 80% funded within 10 days of the disaster.

He also called on key donors and organisations including Nato and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to mobilise helicopters, trucks, and heavy lifting equipment - and he urged donations of 450,000 more winterised tents and shelters, two million blankets and sleeping bags.

"The people and government of Pakistan are faced with an extraordinary challenge and we need to make an extraordinary effort to support them," Annan told a press conference. "What is needed is an immediate and exceptional escalation of the global relief effort to support the work of the government of Pakistan."

He said he was sending letters "to a whole set of countries" seeking help.

The latest death toll stands at 42,000 with at least 67,000 people injured, "but because we still have not accessed hundreds of thousands of people in remote areas, we fear that the actual figures are far higher," he said.

"And unlike some natural disasters, in which victims die immediately, the death toll in Pakistan is not over yet," Annan warned.

"An estimated three million men, women and children are homeless. Many of them have no blankets or tents to protect them against the merciless Himalayan winter."

"That means a second, massive wave of death will happen if we do not step up our efforts now."

The secretary-general sidestepped a question about donor fatigue and said he would be attending an emergency donors' conference in Geneva next week, which the United Nations was convening. He urged governments and other organisations to attend at the highest level.

"There are no excuses," he said. "If we are to show ourselves worthy of calling ourselves members of humankind, we must rise to this challenge. Our response will be no less than a measure of our humanity."

The United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan warned that a second " massive wave of death" would hit Pakistani areas most affected by the mammoth earthquake unless the international community stepped up the relief effort immediately.

With winter approaching fast and terrain difficult in the affected area of some 11,000 square miles, the relief effort was one of the most challenging undertaken, he said.

"It is a race against time to save the lives of these people," Annan said. "This is a huge, huge disaster ... perhaps the biggest ever that we have seen ... and at the time of the cold season."

"I would hope that the international community will respond and those with capacity will do everything possible to work with us and work with the Pakistani government."

All essential infrastructure has been destroyed in the area, including roads, water systems, hospitals, schools and government buildings, Annan said explaining that some remote areas have still not been reached because of the difficult terrain.

He called for a major increase in funds, noting that donors had only made firm commitments for 12%, or £20 million of the UN appeal for £173 million. By comparison, he said, the UN flash appeal after last December's tsunami was more than 80% funded within 10 days of the disaster.

He also called on key donors and organisations including Nato and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to mobilise helicopters, trucks, and heavy lifting equipment - and he urged donations of 450,000 more winterised tents and shelters, two million blankets and sleeping bags.
"The people and government of Pakistan are faced with an extraordinary challenge and we need to make an extraordinary effort to support them," Annan told a press conference. "What is needed is an immediate and exceptional escalation of the global relief effort to support the work of the government of Pakistan."

He said he was sending letters "to a whole set of countries" seeking help.

The latest death toll stands at 42,000 with at least 67,000 people injured, "but because we still have not accessed hundreds of thousands of people in remote areas, we fear that the actual figures are far higher," he said.

"And unlike some natural disasters, in which victims die immediately, the death toll in Pakistan is not over yet," Annan warned.

"An estimated three million men, women and children are homeless. Many of them have no blankets or tents to protect them against the merciless Himalayan winter."

"That means a second, massive wave of death will happen if we do not step up our efforts now."

The secretary-general sidestepped a question about donor fatigue and said he would be attending an emergency donors' conference in Geneva next week, which the United Nations was convening. He urged governments and other organisations to attend at the highest level.

"There are no excuses," he said. "If we are to show ourselves worthy of calling ourselves members of humankind, we must rise to this challenge. Our response will be no less than a measure of our humanity."

Blair Determined To Keep Britain's Nuclear Weapons
http://www.spacewar.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-05zzm.html

London (AFP) Oct 19, 2005 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that a nuclear deterrent remained a key part of Britain's defence, despite being useless against terrorism.

China, US Agree To Improve Military Ties
http://www.sinodaily.com/news/china-05zzzzzzzzzw.html

Beijing (AFP) Oct 20, 2005 - China and the United States agreed to improve military ties Wednesday after US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that a rapid and secretive military buildup was sending "mixed signals" about China's intentions, US officials said.

Iran Shares IAEA Optimism Over Resumed Talks With EU
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iran-05zzzzq.html

Tehran (AFP) Oct 19, 2005 - Iran said Wednesday it shared the optimism of the head of the UN nuclear watchdog over a resumption of talks on its controversial nuclear programme with the Europeans.

US backs EU on Iran nuclear conflict: official
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051019183857.l5dq9i1d.html

Analysis: N. Korea Political Show Pays Off
http://www.spacewar.com/news/korea-05zzzzv.html

Seoul (UPI) Oct 19, 2005 - When North Korea introduced a gala gymnastic show called the Arirang Festival in August, many Pyongyang-watchers in Seoul considered it a political exercise aimed at tightening the state's control over North Koreans amid strong international pressure on the nation's nuclear weapons program and human rights record.

Medis Receives General Dynamics Order For Next Phase Of Military Fuel Cell Research Program
http://www.spacewar.com/news/energy-tech-05zzzzzzzj.html

New York (SPX) Oct 20, 2005 - Medis Technologies has announced that it has received a follow on order from General Dynamics C4 Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, for further research and analysis of Medis' fuel cell Power Packs.

Committee Hedges On Biodefense Bill
http://www.spacewar.com/news/terrorwar-05zzzn.html

Washington (UPI) Oct 19, 2005 - Senators have backed a new measure designed to boost medical preparedness against terrorist attacks, though lawmakers remain divided on several key issues.

Bush Credibility Haunts Rice Testimony
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzr.html

Washington (UPI) Oct 19, 2005 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a skeptical and at times combative Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday in her first hearing on Iraq before the panel since she assumed office.


Rice won't say if US troops will quit Iraq in 10 years
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051019185744.a573o8p9.html

Japan, US And Australia To Hold Strategic Talks In Tokyo
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzq.html

NATO Chief Says Door Is Open To Ukraine
http://www.spacewar.com/news/ukraine-05d.html

Kiev (AFP) Oct 20, 2005 - Visiting NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Wednesday that the door to the defence alliance "was, is and remains open" to Ukraine, although he would not comment on a timetable for membership.

Animal welfare groups sues US navy over sonar harm to whales
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051020012123.zyc6rmzp.html

Los Angeles CA (AFP) Oct 20, 2005 - American environmental groups on Wednesday sued the US Navy over its use of a type of ear-splitting sonar that they say can cause internal bleeding and even death in whales and dolphins.


US military eyes return of three Okinawa areas: report
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051019235720.fh6vmnz6.html


Pentagon declines to address Spanish warrant against US troops
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/051019184926.fuyh7dbx.html

Strongest Hurricane On Record Roars Toward Mexico And US
http://www.terradaily.com/news/hurricane-05zzzzx.html


Cancun, Mexico (AFP) Oct 19, 2005 - Hurricane Wilma on Wednesday became the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic as it hurtled toward Mexico and the storm-weary US coast with terrifying winds, forcing tens of thousands to flee.


Mass Evacuations As Wilma Heads For Land
http://www.terradaily.com/news/hurricane-05zzzzy.html


US seeks emergency agency's overhaul amid new hurricane threat
http://www.terradaily.com/2005/051020013010.5zi7kao6.html


Fast-strengthening hurricanes leave even experts stunned and stumped
http://www.terradaily.com/2005/051020011408.n7rhm1zd.html

China Reports New Bird Flu Outbreak As Pandemic Fears Grow
http://www.terradaily.com/news/epidemics-05zz.html


China Unveils Broad Blueprint Aimed At Righting Growth Imbalances
http://www.terradaily.com/news/china-05zzzzzzzzzv.html


Honda Unveils Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Concept Car
http://www.terradaily.com/news/energy-tech-05zzzzzzzh.html


Analysis: Time Squeeze For Quake Victims
http://www.terradaily.com/news/disaster-ma...ent-05zzzt.html


US Support For India's Nuclear Programme Is A One-Off: Official
http://www.terradaily.com/news/nuclear-civil-05zzze.html

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...19-123226-4003r

Analysis: U.N. report links Hariri killing to Syria
By Stefan Nicola
UPI Germany Correspondent
Published October 19, 2005


KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany -- Detlev Mehlis, the German investigator leading the U.N. inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, is convinced the bombing was plotted by a group of high-ranking Lebanese and Syrian intelligence personnel; his report, which he will hand over to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Friday, is set to reopen old wounds in Syria-Lebanon relations.

According to an article by the German newsmagazine Stern, which will hit the newsstands Thursday, Mehlis, 56, has launched investigations against key figures of the intelligence circles in Beirut and Damascus. United Press International has received the full text of the article ahead of publishing.


According to the piece, written by a journalist close to Mehlis and the investigation, the German and his U.N.-mandated, 100-strong staff heard from more than 400 witnesses about the Feb. 14 assassination of Hariri, the popular former Lebanese politician, who was killed along with 20 of his followers when a bomb exploded under his convoy in downtown Beirut.

While most of the witnesses are not suspected of being involved in the killing, some high-ranking Syrian officials are: Among them, according to Stern, Roustom Ghazalé, the former head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, and Asef Shawkat, the current security chief in Damascus. Mehlis questioned six more high-ranking Syrian intelligence officials, Stern said. Shawkat's involvement could prove especially damaging to Damascus, as he is the brother-in-law of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In an interview with CNN, Assad denied any involvement in the killing and vowed to punish any Syrian proved to be involved in the affair.

The Syrian government has borne the brunt of Lebanese and international outrage at the killing, due to its extensive military and intelligence influence in Lebanon, as well as the public rift between Hariri and Damascus just before the prime minister's resignation. Mehlis' mission coincided with growing U.S. pressure on Damascus to control its 310-mile border with Iraq, stop supporting radical Palestinian groups, and end its interference in Lebanon where some say Syrian intelligence is still operating despite the withdrawal of all troops earlier this year.

The report will be made public just days after the death of Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan rattled Damascus. Kenaan, 63, was reported to have committed suicide in his office earlier this month. He served between 1982 and 2001 as the head of Syria's military intelligence service in Lebanon where Damascus maintained several thousand troops and an important contingent of intelligence personnel from 1975 until last April 26, when under international pressure Syria was forced to withdraw. Mehlis questioned Kenaan, but not as a suspect, Stern reported.

He did, however, grill Ghazale for five hours, after which the Syrian reportedly acted rather self-assured: "I love all Lebanese, and Hariri I have loved especially dearly," he said according to Stern.

But Mehlis confronted him with his own motif: Investigators had found $20 million on one of Ghazalé's Beirut bank accounts -- all that with his rather modest monthly salary of roughly $3,000. Mehlis asked the Syrian how he got so much money, to which Ghazale reportedly did not directly answer.

"What does the $20 million have to do with the murder?" he finally asked.

In Lebanon, Mehlis' investigation has led to deep insecurities. The government has beefed up security ahead of the report's publication to ease fears Beirut would slide into chaos. It had initially proclaimed the killing was done by an individual suicide bomber, but Mehlis and his team quickly found otherwise: At least eight people have been directly linked to the assassination, Mehlis found, with a total of 20 people overall involved in the case. Hariri's followers opt that the men responsible are tried before an international tribunal.

Four high-ranking members of the Lebanese intelligence have been arrested. In June, Mehlis' team had searched office and private apartment of Mustafa Hamdan, the pro-Syrian head of the presidential guard. Hamdan is accused of messing with evidence at the scene of the crime, as he ordered to fill up the crater left by the bomb, Stern said.

Prosecutors arrested three more Lebanese officials, including Jamil Sayyed, the country's former security chief. Sayyed has sworn innocence, and said to prove so he would "go to the end of the world."

Syria is under great international pressure from the United States and France over the killing. Washington is expected to increase pressure on the Assad regime if the assassination proves to lead to Damascus. Observers say Syrian involvement in the killing would be near political suicide: It would likely destroy Syria's international reputation and hand its opponents a reason to deliver the blow that could finally destabilize the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down. Washington considers Syria a state sponsor of terrorism, though it maintains diplomatic relations with it.

None of the big political killings in Lebanon were solved in recent years -- but Mehlis has a reputation of getting to the truth.

The 56-year-old German from Berlin has solved the "La Belle" case, the terrorist bombing of the Berlin discotheque in 1986, which killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman. Mehlis accused Libya of direct involvement in the bombing.

The importance of his new report and his own role might be compared to that of Hans Blix, the U.N. investigator who was deployed to Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction, which he did not.

The U.S. magazine Newsweek earlier this month reported that the U.S. government had discussed a possible military intervention in Syria. According to the article, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice convinced her colleagues to await Mehlis' report for a decision. The goal seems to be to "get [the regime] by the throat, and then really squeeze," Joshua Landis, a Fulbright scholar in Damascus who runs an influential blog called Syriacomment.com, told Newsweek.

So does Mehlis' report decide over war and peace? Or does it simply result in sanctions that might bring about the end of the Assad regime?

"I never wanted to be compared with Hans Blix," Mehlis told Stern. "But now I know how he must have felt."

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...19-122246-8839r

EU debate: War on terror vs. civil liberties
By Gareth Harding
UPI Chief European Correspondent
Published October 19, 2005


BRUSSELS -- Should cherished personal freedoms be sacrificed in the war on terror? Most E.U. governments and the European Commission appear to think so despite howls of protest from civil liberties groups.

"European Union states may have to accept an erosion of some civil liberties if their citizens are to be protected from organized crime and terrorism," said British Home Secretary Charles Clarke, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the 25-member bloc.


Franco Frattini, the commission's top anti-terror official, believes the most fundamental human right is the right to life, or as the former Italian foreign minister somewhat crudely put it: "the right not to get blown up."

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, the European Union has adopted a raft of measures aimed at tackling terrorism, ranging from a European arrest warrant to the freezing of terrorists funds to the exchange of passenger data with U.S. authorities.

Most of these measures were adopted with little public consultation and, as a result, little public opposition. But one British advocacy group -- Statewatch -- has consistently fought a David-versus-Goliath battle against what it sees as Brussels' creeping authoritarianism.

"We are living at a moment in history when civil liberties and democracy are under attack as never before and the need for a collective response to counter these threats has never been greater," said Statewatch Director Tony Bunyan at the launch of the European Civil Liberties Network in Brussels Wednesday.

Bunyan accuses the European Union of introducing a range of repressive measures under the guise of fighting terror, "which it would never have dared to bring in during the Cold War era."

"Of course we all want security, of course we don't want to get blown up in the morning," the veteran civil liberties campaigner told United Press International. "The real question is: Are the measures put in place to deal with that threat about tackling terrorism or creating a fortress society?" Clearly the latter, Bunyan believes. In a study of the Union's action plan on terrorism adopted after last year's Madrid bombings, Statewatch concluded that 27 of the 57 proposed measures had "little or nothing to do with tackling terrorism."

European leaders say proposals in the pipeline, such as retaining records of e-mails and phone conversations, are needed to track down terrorists and prevent a repeat of the atrocities that claimed almost 200 lives in Madrid last year and the more than 50 in London in July. But Bunyan says intruding on personal liberties built up over hundreds of years plays into the hands of terrorists.

"It is not terrorism that will destroy our democracy and way of life. What may destroy our democracy and way of life is the reaction of E.U. governments to the threat of terrorism. That's a great danger."

Statewatch is concerned that the fight against terror is not only eroding civil liberties but creating a climate of fear in Europe, aiding the rise of extremist groups, making Europeans more vulnerable to attack, threatening multiculturalism and fostering Islamophobia.

Few mainstream European politicians share these views, partly out of fear of appearing unpatriotic or soft on terror. But some legislators believe E.U. leaders have overstepped the mark in detaining suspects without trial for prolonged periods, questioning the usefulness of the European Convention on Human rights and deporting suspected terrorists to countries where they may face torture or the death penalty.

"The difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that the latter retains the rule of law," writes Cecilia Malmstrom, a Swedish Liberal member of the E.U. Parliament, in the European Voice newspaper. "If we start to go weak on that, then we are on a very dangerous slippery slope."

Other lawmakers, however, have little patience for legalistic niceties in the war on terror. In the same newspaper, British Conservative Timothy Kirkhope writes: "It is of paramount importance that law enforcement authorities have the tools they require to protect us. They must not be hamstrung either by excessive and unnecessary bureaucracy or by an unbending devotion to human rights -- however well intentioned."

One thing is sure: The argument between those who would gladly exchange part of their freedom for security and those who believe liberty should not be sacrificed in the fight against terror is set to continue for many years to come. In the meantime, terrorists -- who have little stomach for such intellectual debate -- will continue doing what they do best: killing and maiming innocent civilians in the most cold-blooded way possible.

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...19-114846-4052r

Analysis: N. Korea propaganda show reaps rewards
By Jong-Heon Lee
UPI Correspondent
Published October 19, 2005


SEOUL -- When North Korea introduced a gala gymnastic show called the Arirang Festival in August, many Pyongyang-watchers in Seoul considered it a political exercise aimed at tightening the state's control over North Koreans amid strong international pressure on the nation's nuclear weapons program and human rights record.

North Korea's media said the event was organized to mark the 60th founding anniversary of the country's ruling Workers' Party on Oct. 10. The 90-minute show features some 100,000 performers, with synchronized acrobatics on the pitch, and the display of various card-flipping images in the stand.


With the festival running every day for two months, however, it was found to have two more goals -- earning much-needed cash and rallying North Korean sympathizers in rival South Korea. And the move seems to have paid off.

The reclusive communist state opened its doors to South Koreans for the nightly performances on Aug. 16. South Koreans were brought in on special charter flights. North Korea also allowed U.S. tourists to visit Pyongyang for the first time since 2002 to watch the show.

Tens of thousands of North Korean citizens watch the show each night at the May Day Stadium. North Korea provided special "Arirang trains" to take residents from remote areas to the show upon the order of their "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, according to the North's media, adding that 3 million people, some 10 percent of North Korea's 23 million population, would enjoy the festival.

But foreigners pay some $300 each for a tour package for the Arirang show. South Korean visitors pay some $1,500 for a two-day package that includes flights and a night in a hotel.

Seoul's Unification Ministry said some 6,800 South Koreans had traveled to Pyongyang for the festival as of Oct. 17.

Upbeat about the South Koreans' rush to the festival, North Korea decided to extend the show to the end of this month, according to sources close to the North. The show was originally scheduled to close Oct. 15, but the North extended the performance by 10 days earlier this month.

The Unification Ministry expects a total of 7,200 South Koreans to visit North Korea by the end of October.

Officials and analysts say North Korea can earn more than $20 million from the Arirang show. When North Korea held the first Arirang festival in 2002 to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the birth of its late founder, Kim Il Sung, it earned $19 million from the four-month performance.

Many South Korean tourists have bought compact discs featuring the Arirang show and other expensive souvenirs to mark the rare visit to their communist neighbor. They tried to bring back books and other propaganda items without permission from the South, customs officials said.

South Korean law states tourists should obtain permits from the Unification Ministry to bring in books, compact discs and similar items from the North. The law reflects South Korea's attempt to thwart the spread of communist material in the nation.

Books that have been brought back are about the North's founding leader, Kim Il Sung, and his son and current leader, Kim Jong Il, according to the customs office.

The retuning visitors, mostly pro-unification activists, have strongly protested seizure of the North Korean material and have caused trouble at the airport, the office said.

The unprecedented mass visit to North Korea has caused controversy as the South Korean visitors include dissidents convicted of working as North Korean spies during and after the 1950-53 Korean War.

The South's conservative Grand National Party and anti-communist civic groups denounced the Unification Ministry's approval of travel permits for the dissidents.

Analysts say the mass trip to the North could promote cross-border exchanges, but warned it may be used by the North's political machine to rally North Korean sympathizers in South Korea.

South Korea has already been hit with an ideological dispute over how to handle a leftist scholar currently facing legal punishment for his alleged glorification of North Korea, a violation of the country's draconian security law.

Activists from anti-communist groups and those who are pro-unification have clashed over the fate of Kang Jeong-ku, a sociology professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, who is being investigated by prosecutors for allegedly violating the anti-communist security law.

The GNP declared itself to be in complete opposition to the Roh Moo-hyun government, saying its stance toward North Korea was undermining the foundations of South Korea's anti-communist national identity. The party also urged Roh to fire his justice minister for ordering the prosecution not to detain Kang.

In response, Roh's office accused the opposition party of reviving the ultra-rightist Cold War regime for political gains ahead of parliamentary by-elections in late October.

Inter-Korean ties improved significantly after a 2000 summit, but the rivals have yet to come up with any substantial measures to reduce military tensions on the world's last Cold War frontier.

More than 50 years after the end of 1950-53 Korean War, the two Koreas remain in a technical state of war, as the three-year conflict ended in an armistice agreement and not a peace treaty. Their border is the world's last Cold War flashpoint, with nearly 2 million troops on either side.

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Politics & Policies: Grim anniversary
By Claude Salhani
UPI International Editor
Published October 19, 2005


WASHINGTON -- Quite unlike the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Marines in Lebanon came in peace -- and at the request of the Lebanese government. This Sunday, Oct. 23, will mark the 22nd anniversary of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut where 241 U.S. servicemen, mostly Marines, lost their lives.

At approximately 6:22 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 23, 1983, a lone terrorist driving a yellow Mercedes-Benz stake-bed truck loaded with explosives accelerated through the public parking lot south of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit Battalion Landing Team headquarters building, detonating about 12,000 pounds of hexogen.


According to the official Department of Defense commission report, the force of the explosion ripped the building from its foundation. The building then imploded upon itself and almost all of the occupants were crushed or trapped inside the wreckage.

"It was one of the largest noises I've ever heard in my entire career," said retired Marine Maj. Robert T. Jordan, the 24th MAU public affairs officer at the time of the bombing. Jordan was in his rack in an adjacent building when the explosion split the still morning air and showered him with glass and pulverized concrete.

It was also the heaviest loss the Marine Corps suffered in any single day since the battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.

A few moments later another suicide bomber rammed his truck into the "Drakkar," a building occupied by French paratroopers. Fifty-eight French soldiers perished in this attack.

The Marines, the French, the Italian and the Brits had come in peace -- to help secure peace in Lebanon. How, and why, did they become the enemy?

First some history: the Lebanese civil war that had started in 1975 had entered a new phase. It was more of an undeclared lull, with Christians in east Beirut and the Muslim-Leftist-Palestinian alliance on the other side in West Beirut, each holding their ground. Beirut was living through an extended cease-fire. It was as though the combatants had grown tired of fighting. In addition to the dozens of armed militias, Palestinian commandos and Syrian regular forces controlled large swaths of the country.

On June 3, 1982, Israel's ambassador to Britain, Sholmo Argov, was shot as he left a dinner reception at London's Dorchester Hotel. The attack was carried out by three members of Abu Nidal's group, a renegade unit at odds with the Palestine Liberation Organization chief, Yasser Arafat. Argov was hit in the head, but survived.

Two days later, on June 5, Israel launched Operation Peace for Galilee -- a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. The invasion was initially designed to push back Palestinian forces operating in south Lebanon, north of the Litani River, thus placing their heavy artillery out of range of the Jewish settlements in the northern Galilee. However, then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon saw an opportunity to suppress the PLO once and for all, and pushed his troops all the way to Beirut.

Israeli forces, supported by their Lebanese Christian allies, laid siege to West Beirut for a grueling 88 days, pounding the city with heavy artillery as well as subjecting it to intense aerial and naval bombardments.

Eventually Philip Habib, President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, negotiated a cease-fire. The Palestinians agreed to leave Lebanon for new exiles in Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen and other countries so long as an international military force could protect the Palestinians who remained behind.

This saw the creation of the Multinational Force, consisting of U.S. Marines, French and Italian troops (the Brits later sent a token force). On Sunday, Aug. 21, Arafat, protected by French troops left Lebanon from Beirut's port, heading for Tunis. Over the next 12 days, 14,383 Palestinian commandos and Syria soldiers, as well as 644 women and children were dispersed around the Arab world.

Shortly after the departure of Arafat and the PLO, Reagan declared a premature victory and ordered the Marines out. "A job well done," he said.

On the afternoon of Sept. 14, 1982, Bachir Gemayel, Lebanon's president-elect, was killed by a massive car bomb in an office building in East Beirut. That evening -- with the multinational force gone -- Christian militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla.

Approximately 1,300 people were massacred -- mostly Palestinians, but also some Lebanese, Syrians, etc. Afterward, though, many Palestinians disappeared from the Beirut Sports Stadium, where they had been detained. Hundreds of boys and men were trucked away never to appear again. To this day, no one really knows where all the bodies are buried, though apparently a huge number are undoubtedly in the mass grave within the camp. But that's another story.

After the massacre the Lebanese government asked for the return of the Multinational Force -- and they did return. They came in peace.

If mistakes were committed in Lebanon -- and they were -- blame should not befall the Marines, or the French paras who paid the ultimate price for peace.

The error was due to lack of coherent foreign policy coming from both Washington and Paris, and their unequivocal support of Lebanon's President Amin Gemayel. That is what lost the hearts and minds of a segment of the Lebanese population the Marines had worked so hard to win.

They had come in peace. Two hundred and forty-one of them never left.

Indonesia Neglected Bird Flu Until Too Late, Experts Say

By Alan Sipress

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Oct. 19 -- Indonesian officials covered up and then neglected a spreading bird flu epidemic for two years until it began to sicken humans this summer, posing a grave threat to people well beyond the country's borders, according to Indonesian and international health experts.

Unlike Southeast Asian countries that began to see human cases almost as soon as avian influenza was identified in their poultry, Indonesia had a generous head start to prevent an outbreak among people. But since July, it has registered more human cases than any other country, including three deaths confirmed by international testing. Influenza specialists agree that the actual number of human cases is higher and expect it to rise with the approach of the rainy season.

Health experts say the Indonesian epidemic started in commercial poultry farms, spread among the tens of millions of free-range chickens raised in back yards across the country and then finally infected people. At each step, the Indonesian government failed to take measures that could have broken the chain, while discouraging research into the outbreak.

As a result, specialists are concerned that the cases in Indonesia pose a worldwide threat if the bird flu virus changes and becomes contagious among humans.

"If the government had acted sooner to stamp it out, there would be no outbreak. They have wasted so much time," said Chairul A. Nidom, an Indonesian microbiologist who first identified the virus in this country's birds. "What terrifies me is that it just won't affect Indonesia."

In recent days, the virus has killed birds in Turkey, Romania and possibly Greece, for the first time presenting a danger to European poultry. Russia on Wednesday reported that preliminary tests, conducted after hundreds of birds died south of Moscow, showed the presence of the virus, according to news services. And China reported a fresh outbreak of bird flu in its northern grasslands, where 2,600 birds have died of the disease.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the chances were increased that avian flu would move to the Middle East and Africa.

Health experts stress, however, that a human pandemic is still most likely to erupt in East Asia. Bird flu is already deeply entrenched among Asian poultry. Moreover, many countries in the region lack both basic agricultural safeguards to prevent the disease from spreading to humans and health care systems able to contain the virus if it does.

Since 2003, at least 60 people in Southeast Asia have died of the illness. U.N. health officials warn the threat could multiply if bird flu develops into a form easily passed among humans, potentially setting off a plague killing tens of millions of people worldwide.

Indonesia, in particular, is a worry to U.N. and other international experts, partly because it has Southeast Asia's largest population of both people and poultry. The country also has an impoverished health care system that has deteriorated significantly since the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the weakening of central government authority following the 1998 ouster of the longtime dictator Suharto.

In an interview with The Washington Post this spring, Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, Indonesia's national director of animal health, first disclosed that officials had known chickens were dying from bird flu since the middle of 2003 but kept this secret until last year because of lobbying by the poultry industry. She also revealed that the government had not set aside any money this year to vaccinate poultry against the virus though officials had trumpeted this as the centerpiece of their strategy to contain the disease.

Naipospos repeated her allegations late last month, but this time in Indonesian in an interview with the influential local newspaper Kompas.

A day after the article was published, the Agriculture Ministry fired her.

U.N. officials complained that her dismissal had set back efforts to fight the virus, faulting the government for ousting what they call its most respected animal health expert at the height of a crisis.

Naipospos alleged that bird flu has never been a priority in the Agriculture Ministry. Until recent months, she added, the ministry was even unwilling to tap its $3 million emergency account to pay for disease control measures.

"They could not see the potential threat until there was an actual threat," she said in an interview with The Post last week. "I talked to the minister about it many times. He said a disease outbreak is not a national emergency, not a disaster."

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said the Indonesian government considers bird flu a matter of great concern. Every morning, he said, he files a report with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on efforts to battle the disease.

"That means our attention is very high on how to address this problem," the minister said in an interview. "The thing is, we don't want to publicize too much about bird flu because of the effect on our farms. Prices have dropped very drastically."

Apriyantono said he fired Naipospos because he was not happy with her handling of bird flu and her working relationship with top ministry officials.

When the virus first appeared in Indonesia in the summer of 2003, government officials were divided over whether the sudden death of hens on a commercial farm on Java island was caused by bird flu or a less virulent ailment, Newcastle disease. Nidom, a professor at Indonesia's Airlangga University, was called in. Within two months, he said, his laboratory research had determined that the ailment was indeed bird flu and was genetically related to a strain found seven years earlier in southern China.

But the owners of major poultry companies, who have personal ties to senior Agriculture Ministry officials, insisted that any containment efforts be done secretly, Naipospos recalled. These eight farming conglomerates, which handle 60 percent of the country's poultry, feared that publicity would harm sales of chicken and eggs. Offering new details in her interview last week, Naipospos said owners even lobbied Indonesia's president at the time, Megawati Sukarnoputri.

"They said, 'It's better to do it with confidentiality. Do a hidden, silent operation,' " Naipospos recounted. "I said, 'It won't work if you do a silent operation. This is a disease that can't be hidden. It's too risky.' "

In late January 2004, Nidom broke ranks and announced his findings to the Indonesian news media. A day later, the Agriculture Ministry confirmed the bird flu outbreak. But already the disease had spread across Java and on to Bali and Sumatra islands.

"It was too late. The virus was everywhere," Nidom recalled.

Last fall, with human cases mounting in Vietnam and Thailand, Nidom was growing increasingly nervous about the prospect of the epidemic spreading to Indonesians. He arranged an October conference at his university to examine bird flu and invited four of the world's premier influenza researchers, from the United States, Japan, Hong Kong and mainland China.

Shortly before its scheduled start, a senior agriculture official contacted Yoes Prijatna Dachlan, the head of Nidom's institute, and demanded that foreign participants and all media be banned, Dachlan said. Dachlan, chairman of the university's Tropical Disease Center, said he rejected the conditions and canceled the gathering. Nidom said officials threatened to have police break it up if it proceeded.

Apriyantono said in the interview that he was unfamiliar with the incident but that Indonesia was open to foreign researchers.

Through this summer, avian flu continued to spread, often unreported, and containment efforts remained unfunded. The disease reached two-thirds of the country's provinces. Then in July, a father and two daughters in an affluent Jakarta suburb died of respiratory disease. The father tested positive as the country's first bird flu victim. Health investigators concluded that his daughters likely died of the same cause.

Responding to public anxiety, Apriyantono went on television to oversee the culling of several dozen pigs and ducks on a farm 10 miles away. But when the cameras left, the campaign stalled. Officials backed away from a vow to kill about 200 swine in the area. Thousands of chickens, identified by health experts as the leading suspects in the outbreak, escaped slaughter.

As suspected human cases mounted last month, government officials said they would take extraordinary measures. Apriyantono said he was changing course and would order a mass slaughter of poultry in any area declared highly infected.

But one month later, Apriyantono acknowledged that he has yet to define such an area. As a result, he has now directed that culling be limited to the specific property where an infection is detected and that neighboring birds be spared.

Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report.




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In Iraq, Two Views: Hero or Villain

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Bassam Sebti

BAGHDAD, Oct. 19 -- Bursting into applause at Saddam Hussein's resolve, Sunni Arab customers in a north Baghdad barbershop on Wednesday welcomed the undaunted reappearance of their fallen leader.

"I swear he is a hero," Mohammed Yousif cried, as men around him cheered televised images of Hussein refusing to identify himself to the tribunal convened to try him. "Look at his brave and strong look!"

"You know me," Hussein, unbowed two years after disappearing into American custody, told the trial when it opened Wednesday. Rejecting a judge's repeated request to state his name for the record, he declared: "If you are Iraqi, you know me."

And Iraqis did, in wildly disparate ways.

Across the country, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds within range of a television were caught up by the image of the 68-year-old man who dominated their lives for three decades, gone from paunchy to wiry in prison, his hair dyed inky black, now clasping the steel rails of the defendants' enclosure.

In Dujail, the Shiite village north of Baghdad that lost 143 men to Hussein's executioners -- the killings that form the basis of the charge he faces -- small groups of men ringed a television outside the mayor's office. As light rain fell, the men strained to hear the patchy audio from the courtroom.

After would-be assassins opened fire on the leader's convoy in 1982, Hussein's forces razed the village, hauling away the men and older boys to prison and the women and children to desolate stockades in the desert.

"I still remember his look when he turned his face while they were dragging him outside the house," said Basheer Hikmat Abad Ali, grasping a photograph of his father, arrested and executed when Ali was 4 years old. "He looked at my mother and then to us just like he was telling her, 'Take care of them -- I don't think that I am coming back,' " the 28-year-old said.

Arab and Western networks throughout the day played newly surfaced footage of Hussein visiting the village immediately after the shooting, interrogating rounded-up village men.


"I'm begging you sir, I'm begging you, I'm begging you," a slight village man in a white dishdasha pleaded in a captured moment of the drama. Hussein turned away. "Separate them. Question them," he ordered.

"Death to Saddam!" men in Dujail cried Wednesday, waving faded black-and-white photos of brothers, sons and fathers, as women in black abayas held other portraits to their breasts, in a haze of fog and sandstorm. "We want him executed."

For the minority of Sunni loyalists, the sight of Hussein unbent and unrepentant before the court appeared to lift their fallen spirits more than his being called to trial and possibly facing death depressed them.

In Auja, birthplace of the toppled leader, a distant cousin of Hussein declared: "This is not right!" She was among groups of women who gathered in darkened houses to watch the proceedings and pray for Hussein. She broke into tears. "What kind of conspiracy plotted to put this knight in a cage like this?"

In Auja and Tikrit, the city claimed by Hussein as his ancestral base, demonstrators took to the streets with framed portraits, tapestries and anything else that bore a picture of Hussein, revealing images often secreted away for fear of confiscation by Iraqi or U.S. troops.

Waving Hussein's photos, the demonstrators chanted amid the honking horns of cars that weaved through the crowd. Men and boys joined by high school girls released from class called out, "Saddam, your name struck America."

At the barbershop in Adhamiya, the loyalist Hussein neighborhood where he made one of his last public appearances in early April 2003 as U.S. troops closed in on Baghdad, customer Ahmed Najim covered his eyes when the TV broadcast revealed that the head judge to try Hussein was Kurdish.

"As if the Arabs are a minority now, and the Kurds are the majority," Najim muttered.

The Sunnis in the barbershop denounced the court as American-made. They rejected the charges of state-run mass killings of opponents in the 1980s. "There were enemies that should be fought," Yousif said, referring to whole families and villages of Kurds and Shiites who were wiped out.

"The women and children who were killed were wives and children of these enemies. When the resistance fought in Fallujah, didn't the Americans destroy the whole the city?"

Special correspondents Naseer Nouri in Dujail and Salih Saif Aldin in Tikrit and Auja contributed to this report.




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Bush Tells Abbas Palestinians Must Confront Armed Militants Bloomberg
US President George W. Bush told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas he must confront armed militants in the Palestinian territories and renewed a call for Israel to dismantle settlement outposts in the West Bank. "The way forward must be by confronting the threat that armed gangs pose to a genuinely democratic Palestine,'' Bush said at a joint news conference with Abbas today at the White House. The U.S. president also urged Israel to help improve the daily lives of Palestinians and to "remove unauthorized outposts and stop settlement expansion.''
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Reactions vary among NY Iraqis Newsday
Albert Nassim got up early enough yesterday to watch Saddam Hussein declare his innocence and scuffle with court guards in Baghdad. The Great Neck resident said it was worth setting his alarm clock for 5 a.m. because he considers the trial of the former Iraqi dictator a historic event he hopes will help bring democracy to the region.

Photos: Saddam Hussein
"This is the best thing the U.S. has done in the Middle East," said Nassim, president of the Babylonian Jewish Center in Great Neck, one of two Iraqi-American synagogues on Long Island and in Queens. "It's going to change the whole attitude of the Middle East, where dictators do their killing for the sake of power." But while many members of Long Island's small Iraqi community watched news of the trial, others said they paid little attention. They said the trial came too late and would do little to reduce the country's violence and terrorism. Ihklas Aljazani said she awoke by 4 a.m. to go to work and didn't bother turning on the TV or even surfing the Internet during the day. "People care about what's going on - all the terror, the bombings," said Aljazani, 34, a supervisor at a Lake Success veterinary laboratory. "They're not worried about what's going to happen to Saddam Hussein," she said, adding that even his execution wouldn't end the violence. She said the biggest concern for Long Island's Iraqi community - 623 people according to 2000 Census count - are their relatives still back home. Dan Azier, a real estate developer in Great Neck who like many Iraqi Jews fled shortly after Hussein's Baath party regime came to power, said he was delighted the former dictator was on trial. "He's the worst murderer ever in history," Azier said. "He's one of the guys that has to be disappeared from the earth." But he said he was also surprised Hussein was facing charges in only one massacre when he allegedly ordered scores of them. Anis Shashou, 55, a Great Neck resident who escaped Iraq in 1971, laughed at Hussein's assertion of innocence. "He's a butcher," said Shashou, who runs a commercial and home interior designing business. "He's always going to think he's innocent." As head of the Bene Naharayim Iraqi-American Jewish Community in Jamaica Estates, Maurice Shohet visited Iraq last year and stayed with U.S. troops in Hussein's former Republican Palace in Baghdad. While pleased Hussein is on trial, he said the prosecutions should go far beyond him to include the entire Baath Party apparatus. "They have to start from the lower level, who got orders to execute, and go up the ladder in order to know where it started," the Great Neck resident said. He added that he hopes the Hussein trial will not stoke ethnic tensions in an already splintered Iraq. "I hope this will not turn into a vendetta against Sunnis in general," he said, referring to Hussein's ethnic group.
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NEWSMAKER-Elusive German prosecutor takes Lebanon by storm Reuters
German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis has been cast in a pivotal role in Lebanon's turbulent political drama as he prepares to deliver his report into the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
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UN urges more aid for quake's homeless San Jose Mercury News
The top UN relief official urged the world Thursday to step up efforts to reach as many as 3 million people left homeless by the South Asian earthquake with winter approaching.
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German Publishers Warm to Google Library Deutsche Welle
Google is heading for a legal battle with American publishers over its plan to digitize books from five major libraries. But German publishers seem warm to the idea. Five major US publishers filed suit in in San Francisco on Wednesday to block Google from scanning books without the permission of copyright holders. The project, already underway but stopped by Google in August, is the Silicon Valley company's bid to make the world's books searchable online. Five major libraries are already participating in the project and Google sent executive Jennifer Grant to the Frankfurt Book Fair on Wednesday to present the idea to European and German book publishers. This week Google introduced print.google.de, the German version of the search engine Google posted online this time last year.

Google is facing a court battle
Google lets users type in a search term then scans its digitized library for the word or expression and produces a list of books where the term is mentioned. Users can then click on the results and a few pages of the text appear allowing users to read up online. The idea is to supplement Internet users with another source of material. In contrast to their American colleagues, German publishing houses have reacted well to the database.

Some German publishers on board
Google said that is discussing terms with all major German publishers. Langenscheidt, which publishes a large selection of dictionaries, said they had got on board. "We are starting with 160 books," Hubert Haarmann, head of the electronic publishing division and the publisher, told the Financial Times Deutschland. "We see it as an additional distribution possibility."

Langenscheidt: snippets will soon be available online
An increased and more direct reach to the consumer is just one way Google is promoting its new project to skeptical publishers. The company also says that publishers will be able to monitor interest in titles through the search engine, and use the information in deciding whether to reprint certain books. Google has also promised publishers a cut of the advertising that will appear on the site. Not all German publishers are on board. In fact, the German association representing publishers has announced it will begin its own project where publishers can scan their own books, rather than let someone else do it. The project is not a competitor to Google, but will allow publishers to create their own database, rather than turn it over to the search engine.

If Google can, anyone can
But American publishers don't want to even take that step. They fear a slippery slope if Google is allowed to digitize copyrighted material. "If Google can make … copies, then anyone can," Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, said in a phone interview with Reuters. "Anybody could go into a library and start making digital copies of anything." At issue is the right of authors and their publishers to their own work versus the "fair use" of their work by the public. Google argues that their search engine will only offer users a "card catalog" function, with a few pages of text. No one will be able to read the entire book online.
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Networking on Internet: Low cost, high value The Economic Times
The Internet has connected us with hundreds of millions of people simultaneously, giving way to sites dedicated to forming online social networks and communities. A large number of social networking services have emerged like Orkut, Friendster, OpenBC, Ryze and Amieo. These sites are not general community sites; instead, they specifically map individuals to other individuals.
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US media split over Saddam trial BBC News
Dramatic images of the former leader stared out from many US newspapers on Thursday, in coverage that ranged from sedate to sensationalist. The trial of Saddam Hussein has special significance in the country that launched the war to unseat the former Iraqi leader, and whose government sees his trial as a key indicator of the rule of law returning to Iraq.

Saddam Hussein is not the only one to question the validity of the court
The New York Times's John Burns noted that "... 30 months after he was ousted by American tanks, the former dictator seemed a shadow of the merciless figure he cut in nearly a quarter of a century as Iraq's tyrannical ruler". "Thinner still than in his initial court appearance a year ago, tie-less, in a store-bought suit and shoes provided by his American captors, his face worn into furrows after nearly two years of solitary confinement, the 68-year-old former dictator dominated the three-hour hearing... with his prideful defiance." But as MSNBC online observed, "a too-busy President Bush did not watch, even as the White House hailed the trial as a key step in Iraq's transition to a functioning democracy". It quoted White House spokesman Scott McClellan saying: "We hope this trial will help bring some closure for the Iraqi people to their country's dark past."

'Pig in his pen'
Jim Garamone, of the American Forces Press Service (AFPS), announced without irony that "Saddam Hussein is getting something he didn't give his victims - a fair trial". The AFPS quoted State Department and National Security Council officials saying that both the prosecutors and defence lawyers in the case are receiving outside help - as the nuances of international law are complex. However, there were few nuances in the New York Daily News coverage of the trial. The tabloid paper's front page is taken up by the headline "She knows he's guilty", along with a picture of a girl holding a photograph of a family member "killed during Saddam Hussein's savage revenge following an assassination attempt". Inside, a picture of the former Iraqi leader is headlined: "The pig's in his pen." "Dictatorial and defiant, Saddam Hussein argued with the judge, scuffled with the guards, and tried to show he was still boss yesterday as his long-awaited trial opened," the tabloid says. "Oozing arrogance, Saddam identified himself as 'the president of Iraq,' insisted he was 'not guilty,' and questioned the legitimacy of the court trying him for the massacre of nearly 150 Shiites in the Iraqi town of Dujail. "But many of Saddam's former subjects didn't need a trial to render their own guilty verdict," the paper adds.

Sounding off
The New York Post's Linda Stasi took to task those responsible for setting up the audio-video system that relayed footage of the trial into millions of American homes. "The sound and picture quality were so bad, it made the Osama bin Laden home movies, which were shot hundreds of miles into the barren mountains of Afghanistan, look like Martin Scorsese productions," she wrote. "In the badly lit courtroom itself, Saddam and his co-defendants sat in big white pens looking like a bunch of old men in a giant baby crib. Saddam bought into the whole baby motif by whining and acting out like a moronic spoiled brat." The New York Times also noted that "the barely functioning audio system in the courtroom left Iraqi and international human rights observers, high-ranking officials of the new Iraqi government and reporters, all shielded from the courtroom by windows of bullet-proof glass, with only snatches of the exchanges". "The microphones for Mr Hussein, other defendants and their lawyers appeared not to function. A DVD machine would not work. Mr Hussein's lawyers contended that many of the 3,000 pages of evidence handed to them were blank."

'Trial may bring stability'
CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was inside the Baghdad courthouse where the trial began. "It is shocking, I would say, to see walk into court [Saddam Hussein and his fellow defendants]stripped of all the accoutrements of power, of the platform of power, of the uniform of power and stripped of the fear that they used to inspire." Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor looked at what good the trial might bring Iraqis. "The Iraqi authorities hope that the trial itself, by publicising the extent of the former regime's cruelty and bringing perpetrators to justice, might also bring an element of political stability," the CSM said. This was a theme taken up by the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum. "If his Sunni countrymen learn what he did to Shiites and Kurds, if the Shiites and Kurds learn what he did to Sunnis, if Iraqis come to realize that his system of totalitarian terror damaged them all, and if others in the Middle East learn that dictatorships can be overthrown, then the trial will have served its purpose. "That, and not an arbitrary standard of international law, is how the success of this unusual tribunal should be measured."
Iraqis Voice Mixed Reactions to Saddam Hussein Trial Voice of America
For Iraqis, the big event has begun International Herald Tribune
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U.N. Report Sees Syrian Involvement in Hariri's Death

By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch

A U.N. investigation has implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese officials in the assassination of Lebanon's leading reformer in a move that U.S. and European officials expect will generate new international pressure on the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad.

In blunt language, the report by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis concludes that the Valentine's Day bombing of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security forces."

The report faulted Damascus for failing to fully cooperate with the probe and cited several officials, including Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa for attempting to mislead the investigation by providing false or inaccurate statements. Nevertheless, Mehlis said many leads now point directly to Syrian security officials.

The findings have been eagerly awaited by U.S. and European officials. Along with a second U.N. report on Lebanon due in days, key members of the Security Council hope to use the findings to increase pressure on the Assad government to end years of meddling in Lebanon and to generally change its behavior both at home and throughout the region, including ending support for extremist groups.

Mehlis concluded that the complex assassination plot involved several months of preparation and was conducted by a sophisticated group with "considerable resources and capabilities." Although the primary motive was political, some of the perpetrators may have been motivated by issues involving fraud, corruption and money laundering, he added.

The slaying followed a "growing conflict" between Hariri and senior Syrian officials, including Assad, the report said. Tensions came to a head during a 10-to-15-minute meeting between the two men on Aug. 26, 2004. The Syrian leader informed Hariri that he wanted to extend for three years the term of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a close ally of Damascus, in defiance of the Lebanese constitution -- a move Hariri firmly opposed.

Syrian officials have repeatedly denied any role in the Hariri slaying. Earlier this week, Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha said, "We are absolutely categoric in saying we had nothing to do with Hariri." Messages to Syrian officials in Washington and at the United Nations were not returned last night.

Mehlis's report includes excerpts of interviews and statements about the meeting, including several by Hariri's close associates and his son recounting how the Syrian president threatened to get Hariri and his family if he did not support the plan. "This extension is to happen or else I will break Lebanon over your head," the son, Saad Hariri, told Mehlis's commission.

In a conversation tape recorded between Hariri and a Syrian deputy foreign minister on Feb. 1, the former prime minister recalled the meeting with Assad as "the worst day of my life." Hariri then told the Syrian official that Lebanon would no longer be ruled from Syria.

Walid Mouallem, the Syrian official and a former ambassador to Washington, warned Hariri that Syrian security services had him cornered and not to "take things lightly," according testimony given to the commission. Two weeks later, Hariri was dead.

When the commission tried to follow up these leads, Syria refused to provide substantive information, Mehlis reported. Assad refused to be interviewed. And interviews conducted last month produced "uniform answers" that contradicted the weight of evidence, he added.

The U.N. probe also said the Hariri murder needs to be evaluated in the context of the bombings that both preceded and followed the assassination, as the former prime minister's entourage drove across Beirut because there could be links between some, "if not all, of them."

Peppered with riveting details, the report said both Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials wiretapped Hariri's phone. Some evidence also suggests that a telecommunications antenna was jammed near where the car bomb went off.

But the 54-page report said the full picture would require a more extensive investigation, and called for the international community to help Lebanese authorities continue the probe. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced late yesterday that he will extend the Mehlis mandate to Dec. 15.

The Bush administration said it would not immediately comment. "We intend to read and study it tonight very carefully and decide tomorrow in consultations with other interested governments what the next steps will be," said U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton. Diplomats expect the report to lead the Security Council to consider action, however.

A second U.N. report on Lebanon is expected next week. It will focus on the implementation of Resolution 1559, which calls for the end of Syria's meddling in Lebanon and the disbanding of armed groups that are tied to Syria.

To follow up on both reports, the United States and other nations have been discussing language for two resolutions that could be introduced as soon as next week to hold the perpetrators to account and add new pressure on the Syrian government, according to U.S. and U.N. officials. Under consideration are new sanctions on Syria.

Mehlis's probe included more than 400 interviews with witnesses and suspects and review of more than 16,000 pages of documents. Among those interviewed was Ghazi Kanaan, the former Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, who committed suicide last week.

Mehlis warned that many Lebanese fear that the international community may not follow through, leaving them vulnerable to the return of Syrian military and intelligence services and a revenge campaign. Recent bombings and assassinations have been carried out "with impunity," deterring potential witnesses from testifying before the Mehlis commission, he said.


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Europe's great migration
A Polish delicatessen and restaurant in west London. Nearly a year and a half after the expansion of the EU, floods of East Europeans have washed into Britain, which has absorbed them like a sponge.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/20/news/poles.php

France digs in heels on farm subsidies
The showdown put Peter Mandelson under renewed pressure to find a way to open European farm markets.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/20/business/wto.php

Frankfurt is quickly losing its American flavor
Long known as the American military's "Gateway to Europe," the Rhein-Main Air Base is shutting down.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/20/news/journal.php

EU approves actions to stem spread of bird flu
The EU adopted new measures to fight bird flu, banning live birds from markets or exhibitions without permission and urging that wild flocks be kept away from poultry feed.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/20/news/flu.php